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The Sabbath Question 



Suntrag ©ftgerfoance antr Suntiag 3Lab3fS 

A SERMON AND TWO SPEECHES 

BY 

LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON 

PASTOR OF THE PARK CHURCH, NORWICH, CONN. 



Six Sermons on tije SaWatlj ©uestton 

BY THE LATE 

GEORGE BLAGDEN BACON 

PASTOR OF THE VALLEY CHURCH, ORANGE, N.J. 




NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 AND 29 WEST 23D STREET 
1882 



^n/\3° 



Copyright by 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

1882 




Press 0/ 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

iVew York 



PREFACE. 



IT would not be presumptuous in me to infer from 
the diligence and ingenuity that have been used 
in publicly misrepresenting my position and course 
on the Sunday question, that the public have some 
interest in the matter. The object of this book, how- 
ever, is, not to define my position, but to discuss the 
question, — a question in which the gravest interests 
are imperilled by untenable assumptions and argu- 
ments on both sides. 

As to the misrepresentations that have been made, 
it is impossible to harbor serious resentment ; for 
they seem to have been devoid of malice. Great 
consideration is due toward that unhappy class of 
our fellow-citizens who have become bound, under 
inhuman and demoralizing contracts, to be funny 
once in every twenty-four hours, honestly if they 
can, but — to be funny. Morality cannot always 
approve the expedients to which they think them- 
selves compelled to resort in the distressing exigencies 
of their toilsome business; but, even where morality 
condemns, humanity may pity and forgive. 

The best part of this book is made up of the 
" Six Sermons " of my noble and saintly brother 



4 Preface. 

George, whose opinions, in the main, I accept as 
my own. If critical readers of the book shall be 
charmed with the clear spiritual insight, the lucid 
argument, and the faultless beauty of expression 
which mark these, like all he ever wrote, and shall 
find what I have written to be rude and little worth 
in the comparison, I shall be better pleased than with 
any commendation they could pronounce upon me. 
I hope the republication of these "Six Sermons" will 
draw wider attention to the forthcoming memorial 
of his life and writings, of which we all, father and 
brothers, regret the long delay. 

POSTSCRIPT. 
Since the copy of this book was prepared for the 
press, two events have occurred to hinder the publi- 
cation of it : first, the stereotype plates of the " Six 
Sermons " were found to have been destroyed ; and 
then, when arrangements to restore them had been 
completed, the sudden and serene departure of my 
father from the midst of his great labors for the 
kingdom of God on earth into the fulness of that 
" Sabbath-rest that remaineth for the people of God," 
interrupted the course of this business with its sorrow 
and its inexpressible joy and triumph. 

LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. 

Norwich, Conn., Feb. 22, 1882. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface 3 



A SERMON AND TWO SPEECHES. 

BY LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. 

i. Personal Duty regarding the Observance of 
the Lord's Day. Sermon to the Park Church, 
Norwich, Conn., September, 1879 .... 9 

2. Sunday Legislation. Address at the Massachusetts 

Sabbath Conventions, Boston and Springfield, Oc- 
tober, 1879 34 

Note. Letter addressed to the Judiciary Com- 
mittee of the Legislature of Connecticut ... 54 

3. Enforcement of Sunday Laws. Speech to the 

Citizens of Norwich, Monday evening, Aug. 11, 1879, 
just after the public defiance of the Law of Connect- 
icut for securing a weekly Day of Rest 59 

5 



6 Contents. 

II. 

SIX SERMONS ON THE SABBATH QUESTION. 

BY GEORGE BLAGDEN BACON. 

PAGE 

Preface 101 

i. The Sabbath of God. Preached Feb. 23, 1868 . 105 

2. The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. Preached 

March 1, 1868 124 

3. The Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 

Preached March 8, 1868 147 

4. The Lord's Day a Privilege. Preached March 

22, 1868 173 

5. The Lord's Day Honorable. Preached March 29, 

1868 204 

6. The Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 

Preached April 5, 1868 231 



A SERMON AND TWO SPEECHES. 

By LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. 



SUNDAY OBSERVANCE AND 
SUNDAY LAWS. 



PERSONAL DUTY CONCERNING SUNDAY 
OBSERVANCE. 

SERMON TO THE PARK CHURCH, NORWICH, 
SEPTEMBER, 1879. 

" ILet etorg man bt fullg persuaUetr in fjfs ofcrn mini." 
Rom. xiv. 5. 

THE question, What is a Christian man's 
duty concerning the observance of the 
Lord's Day ? is just now in the worst position 
into which a question of personal duty can 
possibly fall. It is in a position of vagueness 
and doubt. Men are not fully persuaded in 
their own minds about it, one way or the other. 
Consequently they are continually in the way 
of being tempted to do that which they sus- 
pect, or half suspect, to be wrong, or that which 
they are not quite sure to be right. When so 
tempted, most men yield to the temptation ; 



io Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws, 

and, so yielding, they wound their own con- 
sciences and condemn their own souls. The 
conscience of the Christian Church amongst 
us is becoming miserably demoralized and 
broken down by this condition of things ; and 
nothing can bring it back to a healthy tone, 
except a thorough clearing up of the intellect 
on the subject. 

I do this generation no injustice in saying 
that the notions of duty on this subject that 
are current in Christian circles are not founded 
on intelligent, conscientious, personal study of 
the will of God concerning it. The opinions 
of our fathers, whether they were right or 
wrong, were so founded ; and they held them 
clearly and firmly, and honored them by con- 
sistent practice. They were fully persuaded 
in their own minds. And we are persuaded in 
their minds, and not in our own. We have 
accepted their conclusions in a matter-of- 
course way, as a sort of tradition of the 
elders, taking for granted that it must be 
right ; and, when we are suddenly confronted 
with a different view, we are first a little 
shocked, and then a little shaken in mind, and 



Concerning Sunday Observance, 1 1 

then, some of us, a little censorious upon the 
wickedness of people that do not come up to 
our standard, and a little self-satisfied and vain- 
glorious over our superior virtue ; and, the rest 
of us, a little disposed to relax somewhat in our 
practice, with a feeling that we are not quite 
certain that it is wrong, or, if wrong, not cer- 
tain that it is so very wrong. It is a wretched 
condition of the conscience and life, growing 
out of a poor, low condition of the intellect, 
which is vague and hazy and fluctuating on one 
of those questions of personal duty on which 
every man ought to be fully persuaded in his 
own mind. 

One consequence of this traditionary way of 
dealing with the question of duty — this taking 
the law from one another, instead of taking it 
directly from the word of God — is, that " the 
good and acceptable and perfect will of God " 
becomes encumbered, as it was in the days of 
the Pharisees, by a system of conventionalities, 
written or unwritten, underneath which the law 
of God is quite lost out of sight. And natu- 
rally enough, when we come to comparing these 
conventional standards, the most rigorous will 



1 2 Sunday Obsei'vance and Sunday Laws. 

seem to be the most virtuous ; so that by and 
by the rule of duty generally professed will be 
some impossible code of ascetic requirements, 
like that in the Westminster Catechism, 1 which 
demands that the whole day be devoted to 
unintermitted acts of spiritual meditation and 
religious worship, and condemns every word 
and thought that departs from spiritual topics, 
as a sin. A most disastrous thing, in the long 
run, is this refinement and improvement on 
the law of God. Some high and worthy souls 
will try to discipline themselves to such sus- 
tained spiritual flights, and with many a help- 
less fall, and many an hour of anxiety and 
self-reproach, will strive more and more for 
the attainment of that ideal, and with some 
measure of success. Others, holding still to 
the same rule of duty, give up the thought of 
conforming their conduct to it, and subject 
their whole lives to the shame and bondage 
of a willing, conscious, habitual short-coming. 

1 "The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, 
even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on 
other days, and spending the whole time in the public and private 
exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in 
the works of necessity and mercy." 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 13 

Others, still, consider that, however doubtful 
they may be themselves about the traditionary 
rules of Sabbath observance, and however little 
they may conform to them in private, neverthe- 
less the traditionary ideas on this subject are 
very salutary, and it is best to keep them up, 
as far as may be, by an outward show or sham 
of conformity. And, finally, there are others, 
and they are pitifully many, who find the regu- 
lations so imposed irksome, not to say impossi- 
ble, and in violent and wicked rebellion cast 
off all cords of restraint, and declare that they 
don't care for God's law, and that they will do 
their own pleasure, whether God be for them 
or against them. Oh, there is a dreadful 
account of human sin, both open and hypo- 
critical, both in the days of the Pharisees and 
in our own days, to be imputed to the setting 
up of a system of conventionalities, instead of 
the law of God, in the matter of the observance 
of the day of rest ! 

Now, instead of attempting to maintain and 
enforce the Sabbath of New England tradition, 
or the Sabbath of the Presbyterian Catechism, 



14 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

by culling " proof-texts " in support of them, I 
propose to go behind all traditions and pre- 
possessions, and study the matter direct from 
the Holy Scriptures themselves. 

I. The first thing, the last thing, the one 
thing, in all the Scriptures most conspicuous 
concerning the Sabbath day, — so conspicuous 
that almost every thing else concerning it is 
unimportant in the comparison, — is, that it is 
to be a day of rest. This is the meaning of 
the word Sabbath-day, — it means the rest-day. 
On the seventh day — the seventh cycle or 
creative period — God rested, and blessed (con- 
secrated) the seventh day of every week for 
human rest from human toil. This is the 
main, primary object and ordinance of the day ; 
and in all the law and the prophets there 
is no other ordinance distinctly given regard- 
ing it. Every one — high and low, house- 
holder and servant, even the very cattle, every 
one — is to knock off work, and rest. So it 
says in Genesis. So it says again in Exodus, 
and in Numbers, and over again in Deuteron- 
omy, and yet again in Nehemiah, and in many 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 15 

of the prophets. This was the public law of 
the land, as well as the law of each man's con- 
science before God. And it was enforced too. 
One Sabbath morning, while the people were 
still under martial law in the desert encamp- 
ment, a man openly undertook to defy the law, 
and to make issue with the government on this 
point of obedience to the law of the weekly 
rest. His challenge to the government was 
accepted on the spot, and he was executed as 
if for treason to the law. And this was right. 
If punishment is ever right for any thing, it 
is right in its uttermost severity in the case 
of one who openly defies the law and the gov- 
ernment, even if it is on a matter of gathering 
sticks, or a matter of firing balls at a bit of. 
bunting. And the government that cannot, 
or dare not, or will not, deal with the open 
defiance of its authority, is a decaying and 
dying government ; and such a government 
was not that of the Hebrew wanderers in the 
wilderness. When the law said, there shall be 
no work, but general rest, throughout the camp, 
the law meant what it said. 

It meant what it said. That is really (if I 



1 6 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

may tell you one of the secrets of theological 
science), that is really the key to the myste- 
ries of biblical interpretation, — that the Bible 
means what it says. Now, in regard to this 
fourth commandment, there is a strong im- 
pression that in some mysterious way it means 
something that it does not say. What it says 
is so simple, — that on the seventh day they 
shall knock off work, and rest, — surely it can- 
not mean so simple a thing as that ! There is, 
I suspect, an impression on some minds, that, 
if they could get at the original Hebrew, they 
could extort more of a meaning out of it than 
that, — that men were just to knock off work, 
and rest. But I think the Hebrew is as plain 
as the English. 

But is not more than this meant when it is 
commanded to " sanctify " the Sabbath day, or 
"keep it holy"? I think not, and I will tell 
you why. First, as I judge, the meaning of 
the opening words of the commandment are 
to be interpreted by the words that follow; 
and, thus interpreted, they mean that the day 
is to be kept sacred from the intrusion of 
labor. Secondly, the meaning of these words 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 17 

is to be judged from the whole course of divine 
instruction and requirement concerning the 
Sabbath day ; and that is directed simply and 
exclusively to this one point of abstinence 
from labor. Thirdly, it is to be judged by 
common sense ; and this excludes the idea, that 
to keep the Sabbath holy was to "spend all 
the time in worship : " for no ordinary mind, 
not one in a hundred, — not one in a hundred 
thousand, — is capable of sustained acts of wor- 
ship twenty -four hours, or twelve hours, or six 
hours, in continuance; and this commandment 
was not given to extraordinary minds, such as 
go to make up a Westminster Assembly of 
theologians, but to mankind at large, and pri- 
marily to a very unspiritual part of mankind, 
— to a clan of freedmen just come forth from 
the house of bondage. 

"But is that all that the commandment re- 
quires ? " The question is put sometimes in 
that spirit of Naaman the Syrian, which can- 
not believe that God would command a simple, 
easy, happy thing, — a spirit which has miscon- 
strued God's word on more vital matters than 
this matter of the rest-day. " Is that all ? " 



1 8 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws, 

Well, is not that enough to begin on ? Had 
you not better wait till you have learned to 
fulfil this plain and easy injunction, before you 
go on to look for some more recondite and 
weighty meaning ? Do you fulfil it ? There 
is no scandal about your deportment. You 
would be offended and pained to see your 
neighbor, whose daily work is done with a 
spade or a grocer's wagon, going about it of a 
Sunday morning. But your work is done with 
your head : and when you carry your six days' 
work over into the seventh, and instead of 
taking the happy repose which is your privi- 
lege and duty, and your privilege because it is 
your duty, you are busy, in your place in 
church, or as you sit with the religious news- 
paper on your lap, maturing business combina- 
tions, getting a complicated bargain into the 
right shape, calculating a new turn in politics, 
or threading the intricacies of a lawsuit, and 
all this without any visible sign of it on your 
countenance, — why, there is no one to be dis- 
turbed or scandalized by it ; but it is in distinct, 
diametric disagreement with this commandment, 
both in its letter and in its spirit, — far more 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 19 

clearly so than if you were to take your hoe 
into your flower-garden, or drag your lawn- 
mower across the turf ; for these are not your 
work, but your recreation. Every thing is done 
with perfect decorum and stillness, when you 
take your hard six days' head-work over into 
the seventh ; but it does not the less suffer the 
retributions which, in the course of nature, 
overtake the violations of a commandment that 
is contained not less in the principles of physi- 
ology than in the beneficent written law. 

But is not the Sabbath ordained for worship ? 
No, not primarily ; but for repose and refresh- 
ment. Only once in the multitude of com- 
mands concerning the Sabbath day, is mention 
made of " a holy convocation : " l the Hebrew 
ritual also made some distinction between the 
seventh-day ceremonies and those of other 
days. 2 But the law and meaning of the day 
are given in the fourth commandment in its 
two varying forms, 3 and they are perfectly 
clear. Nevertheless, worship and the study of 
God's will did grow to be a beautiful and con- 

1 Lev. xxiii. 2, 3. 2 Num. xxviii. 9 ; Lev. xxiv. 8, 

3 Exod. xx. 8-1 1 ; Deut. v. 12-15. 



20 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

stant incident of the day of rest. As the 
scenes of public history move swiftly by us in 
the early books of the Old Testament, we get 
here and there a glimpse of domestic life, and 
among these the picture of a godly family sad- 
dling its beasts to go to the prophet's house. 1 
Once or twice in the Psalms 2 we seem to hear 
a burst of Sabbath worship ; and at last, after 
the return from exile, we find the synagogue, 
the type of the Christian church, wherein 
" Moses is preached every Sabbath day," 3 
grown into universal acceptance. And all this, 
not by ordinance, but all the more to the honor 
of God and his church because it is without 
ordinance — the native growth of a willing wor- 
ship upon a divinely given rest-day. 

2. Such was the use of the Sabbatic law 
under the Old Testament. What were the 
abuses and perversions of it, the pages of the 
Four Gospels repeatedly show. That spirit to 
which I have already alluded as infecting, not 
Jewish only, but Christian interpretations of 

1 2 Kings iv. 22. 2 Psa. lxxxi. 3 ; xcii. title. 
3 Acts xv. 21. Cf. Acts xiii. 14, 15, 27; Luke iv. 15, 16. 



Concerning Sunday Observance, 21 

Scripture, could not be content with the plain 
and simple thing which the Scripture said, but 
must needs superinduce upon it new meaning's 
by construction and inference ; thus devising 
new prohibitions, and thereby inventing new 
temptations and new sins, — a most perilous 
and pernicious business. " Carrying a bed ! " 
said they, when they saw one that had been 
sick of the palsy. " Nay, verily ; that is trans- 
portation. If a bed, why not all your house- 
hold furniture ? Where can you draw the line ? 
Rubbing out corn in the hands ! what is that 
but a form of threshing? and killing a flea is 
tantamount to hunting. And if one were to 
climb a tree, and thereby break a twig of it, he 
might as well have chopped wood all day." Of 
course, under this sort of interpretation, the 
suffering or imposing of the worst annoyances 
was a mark of the highest virtue. The ascetic 
treatment of the day transformed it from a 
privilege into a slavish burden. There was no 
point on which Pharisaism so bitterly attacked 
the conduct of Jesus ; none on which his pro- 
test against the Pharisees, as making void the 
law which they pretended to guard, was more 



22 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

pointed. His contention against them was, 
not that the Mosaic Sabbath was an intolerable 
burden, but that the intolerable burden which 
they bound on men's shoulders was not the 
Mosaic Sabbath, but a travesty of it. These 
artificial austerities, not only were they not 
required, they were forbidden by the whole 
genius of the day. 

Thus the clear meaning of the ancient law 
is confirmed by the authority of Jesus Christ 
in his rebuke of current misinterpretations. 
The object of the Sabbath law was plain 
enough. Other blessings were incidental to 
it. A whole system of useful religious observ- 
ances had grown up around it. But the pri- 
mary object of the institution was rest, — that 
each one should rest himself, and allow all 
others to rest This was the law. Christ did 
not attempt to modify it. He restored it 
wherein it had been made void by misinter- 
pretation. The Sabbath, he said, was not an 
end, but a means to an end. The Sabbath law 
was a law of universal rest ; but it was enacted 
for the benefit of mankind, and is therefore to 
be held subordinate to human wants and neces- 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 23 

sities. In short, he laid down the principle 
that is incorporated into our own legislation 
on the day of rest, — that suspension of labor 
is not to be exacted in case of works of neces- 
sity or mercy. But he did not change the char- 
acter of the Hebrew festival, or add any new 
commandment to that which made it a day of 
personal and public repose. The ordinance 
that "all the time be spent in acts of public 
or private worship " is not found in the Old 
Testament or in the New, but in the acts of 
the Westminster Assembly of Divines. It 
does not appear that he whom, alone of men, 
we call our Lord, spent his Sabbaths in that 
way. In fact, the contrary appears at that 
dinner-party of a chief Pharisee, at which he 
was a conspicuous guest. 

But now let us come closer to the personal, 
practical question which concerns and some- 
times perplexes you and me. The question is, 
not what was the duty of a faithful Hebrew 
respecting the seventh day of the week, but 
what is the duty of an American Christian 
concerning the first day. And that, let us 



24 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

plainly acknowledge, is not to be denned by 
the letter of the law of Moses. We are not 
under the law, but under grace. We do not 
pretend to follow the letter of the fourth 
commandment. We have even conspicuously 
and quite unnecessarily departed from the let- 
ter of it at a point on which the commandment 
insists with great emphasis, alleging it as con- 
taining the very reason of the commandment. 
The commandment says, Keep the seventh day 
sacred to repose, because on the seventh day 
the Lord your God rested from the labors of 
the creation. We say, No : we will keep the 
first day of the week for other reasons. And 
when the Seventh Day Baptists reproach us 
with this unfaithfulness to the law which we 
profess so punctiliously to observe, we have 
really very little to say for ourselves ; and so 
we generally turn them off with some poor 
little joke : for the most of an argument that 
I remember to have heard against the Seventh 
Day Baptists, was the one which used to be 
rehearsed once a year by the Professor of 
Astronomy at Yale College, when, at a certain 
point in his lectures, he advised them all to 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 25 

sail around the world to the eastward, and so 
gain a day in their reckoning, and they would 
come back all right, and quite like other peo- 
ple. The day doesn't matter (we say with a 
fine and lofty contempt), so long as it is one 
day in seven. The day does matter, says the 
fourth commandment ; and it shall be the 
seventh day, for such and such a reason. 
The day does matter, said the early Chris- 
tians ; and we decide, not to keep the seventh 
day, but the first, for such and such another 
reason. The very ground of the change was, 
that it did make a difference which day was 
observed, and that the difference was worth 
making. And it has this noble instruction for 
us, if only we have ears and hearts to receive 
it, that the laws of commandments contained 
in ordinances — the formulas, "touch not, taste 
not, handle not, which perish in the using " — 
are not a sufficient measure and gauge of the 
Christian's duty. Every Lord's Day that we 
gather for worship in the midst of the general 
calm and silence of a public rest is a decla- 
ration at the same time of our loyalty to the 
spirit of the law, and of our freedom from its 



20 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

letter. It is a sign that we have taken, not a 
lower and laxer standard of duty, but a higher, 
— the law interpreted by the spirit of grateful 
love. 

Applying, now, this standard to the practical 
and personal questions of duty touching the 
Lord's Day, we find that : — 

I. Some of these questions may be elimi- 
nated at once, as being settled by other consid- 
erations. 

1. Many questions on which we ask for light 
from the fourth commandment are fully de- 
cided for us under the fifth, by the law of the 
household of which we are members, by the 
known wish of the father and mother whom we 
honor and obey. 

2. Other questions may be settled for us in 
like manner by the civil law to which we owe 
allegiance, and which limits us in our liberty of 
deciding and acting at certain points. 

3. Duty to the church — the community of 
the fellow-Christians among whom we live — 
may often be a consideration that shall justly 
decide questions of duty concerning the day of 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 27 

rest, quite independently of their intrinsic mer- 
its. The fact that this line of argument is 
so often exaggerated and overstrained in our 
time must not lead us to forget that it is a 
legitimate and authoritative line of argument. 

II. But setting aside all such questions, 
thankful to be relieved of them, there will still 
keep coming back to us questions of Lord's Day 
observance to be decided squarely and directly. 
What can I say that shall be helpful to you to 
reach a right conclusion on them ? 

I cannot but think that my personal experi- 
ence has prepared me in some degree to advise 
upon this subject ; for the question has been 
forced upon my decision in circumstances in 
which no one of these outside considerations 
could come in to make weight, — in countries 
where there was neither public sentiment, nor 
Christian feeling, nor civil law, nor filial duty, 
to help decide. I have always been glad, for 
myself and my family, that I was led to keep 
the same quiet, religious, and family Sunday in 
Germany and Switzerland that I had learned 
to keep here in New England. And however 



28 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

difficult, at times, it was, I believe still that it 
was the right thing, the incomparably best 
thing, for me and my children. I do not ask 
you to accept my rule. I invite no man to 
judge me concerning holy days, and I myself 
judge no man. Be persuaded each in your own 
mind. But ponder well the principle which I 
commend to you, the axiom which cannot be 
wrong, that in this, as in all things else, you are 
bound before God to do the very best thing, and 
nothing but the best. 

I seem to hear the answer coming back with 
a sigh from burdened hearts, " It is only a new 
way of saying the old thing. To do the very 
best, and nothing but the best, what can this 
mean but to impose upon us the strain of 
twelve or fifteen hours of incessant religious 
exercises, — the yoke which neither we nor our 
fathers were able to bear ? " 

To which I have only to say, that, if it is true 
that this is the best, then you are bound to it. 
And if your relaxation of this rule means that 
you give up trying to do your best in God's 
service, and mean to do only your second-best, 
then are you condemned in that which you 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 29 

allow. But it is not true. The history of your 
individual conscience, as well as the history of 
society, proves that this exaggeration of the 
law of God is neither for his glory nor for the 
good of his human creatures. We must go 
behind this "tradition of the elders" for the 
true rule of a Christian man's duty on the 
Lord's Day. 

1. We find it in the words of the ancient 
law, — the law of rest, — rest of body and mind. 
How strangely good people sometimes miss it ! 
Often, passing Sunday away from home, I have 
heard my hosts confess, with half a blush, that 
they were guilty of having a late breakfast 
Sunday morning. And oftener still I have 
heard some of those bustling, stir-about Chris- 
tians, whom we have all met with, claiming, 
with much complacency, that his Sunday was 
the hardest day of all the week to him, — that 
what with church-going, and Sunday schools, 
and prayer-meetings, and street-preaching, and 
all, he got up earlier, worked harder, and went 
to bed wearier, than any other day, — all which 
may be right, but it is not resting. 

2. Do I need to say that it ought to be the 



30 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

glory of the Lord's Day in a Christian family 
that it is the home-day ? This is one of the 
pleasant things in the remembrance of our 
Sundays abroad, — the great processions of the 
baby-wagons on every public promenade and 
pleasant country-road. There were sights and 
sounds of demoralizing carousal on the one 
hand, and of enforced drudgery on the other 
hand ; but the pleasant family groups about 
the baby-wagons were among the good things 
left to them of a day of rest. 

It does seem as if sometimes amongst us a 
false notion of the sanctity of the day was 
suffered to hinder our sanctifying it by holy 
uses of family duty and affection. If ever old 
age, or sickness, or pining loneliness, are suf- 
fered to lack the enlivening of your visit, 
because you hold the day too holy for Sunday 
calls, the wrong is almost identical with that 
of those whom our Lord rebuked, who would 
say to their parents, " Corban — it is conse- 
crated to holy uses — that which should have 
gone to your comfort and support." * 

3. Let a systematic part of your Sabbath 

1 Mark vii. 11 ; Matt, xv, 5. 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 31 

service be the doing of works of mercy. " Pure 
religious worship, and undefiled before God 
and the Father is this : To visit the fatherless 
and widow in their affliction, and to keep your- 
selves unspotted from the world." Pre-emi- 
nently is the Lord's Day the day for the 
deacons and deaconesses of the church to be 
busy on their official errands to the poor. 

4. Finally, among the duties of the Christian 
Sabbath are public worship and instruction. I 
name them last, because, to those who spend 
the day in the spirit of these suggestions, 
there will be no need of enjoining them at all 
as a duty. They will come of themselves. 
They were not named in the original law of 
the Sabbath, but see how naturally and uni- 
versally they came to be used ; so that in Paul's 
day, as in ours, wherever there were Jews, 
there was a synagogue, and in it preaching 
and worship every Sabbath day. 1 If you keep 
this day to the Lord as a day of rest, of home 
comfort, of good works to the poor and the 
sick, I have no concern at all but that you 
will use it, in due proportion, for direct acts 

1 Acts xv. 21. 



32 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

of worship. And the worship that you render 
will not be the less acceptable to the heart of 
God, the incense of your pure offering will not 
be of a less sweet savor, being the willing- 
sacrifice of a thankful heart, than if, under the 
imagined stress of law, you were putting the 
mind on a continual and conscious strain to 
spend " all the time either in public or private 
worship." 

The common mistake, in this whole business, 
is the mistake of supposing that the Lord's 
Day is so much time that the Lord has taken 
away from you that he might reserve it for 
himself. Nay, on the contrary, he has claimed 
it for himself that he might give it back to 
you. Once a week he comes between you and 
your employers, between you and your exact- 
ing business, your perplexities, your anxieties. 
It is to these that he turns in your behalf, and 
says, "Stand off a while. Let that man alone. 
Let him rest. This is my day." 

And then he turns to you, and says, " This 
is my day, — the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. 
I have redeemed it, and guarded it, that I 
might give it back to thee. It was made for 



Concerning Sunday Observance. 33 

man. The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath 
day. The Lord's Day is thine own day — 
thine." 

And now, what will you do with it, — this 
free day, God's free gift to you ? Will you 
toss it back into the midst of this world's 
cares and toils, to be ravened up by them ? 
Will you consume it greedily in selfish pleas- 
ures, reckless of others' burdens of toil, that 
you may riot ? Will you make of it " a day to 
afflict the soul, and bow down the head like a 
bulrush ? " It were like flinging back the gift 
into the giver's face. Or will you rather rest 
in the Lord with a thankful and peaceful heart, 
so resting that others may have rest as well as 
you ? Will you make the Sabbath a delight in 
your home ? Will you be abundant in Christ- 
like acts of mercy, and "joyful in the house 
of prayer ? " 



34 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 



SUNDAY LEGISLATION; 

A LAW OF REST FOR ALL NECESSARY TO 
THE LIBERTY OF REST FOR EACH. 

ADDRESS AT THE MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH CON- 
VENTIONS, BOSTON AND SPRINGFIELD, OCTOBER, 

1879. 

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-CIT- 
IZENS, — I purpose scrupulously to 
refrain from overstepping the narrow limits of 
the thesis on which I have been asked to speak, 
in any such way as to encroach on ground 
occupied by others. But there is one point 
essential to a right understanding of this and 
of many other parts of the subject before us, 
which, through the regretted absence of Judge 
Strong, has failed to be formally set before the 
convention, 1 and which, therefore, I may be 
permitted to illustrate by an incident that 

1 Judge Strong of the Supreme Court of the United States had 
been expected to read a paper on " The Civil and the Religious 
Sabbath/' 



Sunday Legislation. 35 

occurred in the first International Sabbath 
Congress, held three years ago at Geneva. 

After many hours of conference and discus- 
sion, the Congress had been brought to the 
point of adopting the platform of a permanent 
international Sabbath league ; and of this plat- 
form a conspicuous article was the one embody- 
ing a " scriptural basis" (as it was called) con- 
sisting of the fourth commandment and the 
declaration of our Saviour, " The Sabbath was 
made for man." The question being on the 
adoption of this article, a fair-haired, near- 
sighted, and broad-shouldered gentleman, who 
had been thus far an earnest and useful mem- 
ber of the convention, arose, and very mod- 
estly and courteously asked (in the German 
language) that no basis of organization should 
be insisted on which would exclude him and 
those whom he represented from co-operation 
in a work so beneficent as the maintenance of 
a weekly day of rest. He himself was a ration- 
alist pastor from Bremen : he was the repre- 
sentative of an " Arbeiterverein," or some sort 
of workingmen's organization of a socialist 
complexion ; and neither he nor the Bremen 



36 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

workingmen had any kind of faith in the 
" scriptural basis," in Old Testament or New, 
which was proposed as a condition of co-opera- 
tion. Only they felt that a weekly day of rest, 
guarded and guaranteed by law, would be an 
immense blessing to the workingman and to 
the whole public ; and they asked the privilege 
of doing what they could, in their own way, 
and acting from their own point of view, in 
co-operation with those who differed from them 
in opinion, to promote the end which they all 
sought in common. 

With many expressions of personal respect, 
the Congress nevertheless voted by an over- 
whelming majority to allow their unorthodox 
brother no part nor lot with them in their 
efforts to promote a social and legislative re- 
form. But I have the satisfaction of assuring 
you that this action was not taken without an 
energetic remonstrance from the representative 
of the United States, who objected to hearing 
America cited as an example of enforcing reli- 
gious duties by secular laws, and declared that 
our American Sunday legislation, which they 
so admired, was founded, not on the principle 



Sunday Legislation. 37 

of enforcing a religious duty by civil law, but 
on the democratic principles of liberty, equal- 
ity, and fraternity, — principles which we be- 
lieve that we understand quite as well in Amer- 
ica as they do in Geneva or Paris. A religious 
basis, he declared, was considered in America 
to be essential to co-operation in religious 
movements ; but that we did not always find it 
necessary to quote scripture in a political man- 
ifesto, though this was sometimes done. It 
was important, he said, that those who under- 
took to deal with the Sabbath question should 
remember that the Sabbath question is not one 
question, but two questions ; that the religious 
Sabbath, consecrated to worship and to divine 
commemoration, and the civil holiday, main- 
tained by force of law, have this in common, 
that in many countries they coincide upon the 
same day ; but they are not the same : the for- 
mer cannot be enforced by secular legislation ; 
and the latter cannot in this age be sustained 
merely by Bible-texts. 

It was not much of a speech, but it made 
something of an impression ; and the speaker 
was entirely contented with the result of it> 



38 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

when, in the great closing assembly, the most 
eloquent conferencier in the French language, 
Ernest Naville, took this distinction for his 
text, and, in a discourse of more than an hour's 
duration, commended the religious Sabbath to 
the observance of every good Christian, and 
the civil Sabbath to the support of every right- 
minded citizen, Christian or not. I wish this 
exquisitely lucid address might be added, in 
English, to our scanty stock of good popular 
literature relating to the subject It might 
help to supersede some of the superstitious and 
fanatical literature now or lately current, from 
the effects of which the Sabbath cause is suf- 
fering. 

Let me ask you, in order to avoid the misun- 
derstanding which will otherwise be inevitable, 
to keep this distinction in mind, and remember 
that, throughout this paper, I am speaking 
primarily, not of the religious, but of the civil 
institution. 

I shall presume, then, on your good sense 
and clear apprehension in this matter, taking 
for granted that you are wiser than the narrow- 
ness of the International Congress, and that, on 



Sunday Legislation. 39 

the enforcement of the external quiet and 
repose of the civil Sunday (which I understand 
to be the aspect of the question on which I am 
invited to speak), you are willing to entertain a 
line of argument broad and liberal enough to 
demand the adhesion and support of every 
reasonable man, whatever his views concerning 
the religious sanctions of the day. 

The question is one of — what shall I say? 
workingmen's rights, I was about to say, ex- 
cept that this expression has become so smutted 
in the dirty hands of demagogues, that one 
loathes to take it up after them, — the question 
is one of personal liberty ; how to secure for 
every citizen the liberty to rest one day in 
seven. 

There is a very free and easy answer to this 
question on the tongue's end of some wise 
people, who deliver it as an axiom that the 
short and ready way to universal liberty of 
resting is simply to keep hands off, not to 
meddle with the matter by legislation, and let 
everybody do as he pleases about it. What 
can be simpler ? 

The temptation is irresistible, to answer 



40 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws, 

these people according to their folly, and con- 
demn them out of their own mouths. For it 
happens, curiously enough, that many of the 
very people who are clamoring against our 
six-day law, as an unwarrantable interference 
with individual liberty, are just as clamorous 
in favor of an eight-hour law of their own 
invention. " What do you want," let me ask, 
" of an eight-hour law ? Why not leave the 
matter to every man to decide for himself, 
whether he shall work eight hours, or ten, or 
fifteen ? Don't let us have any meddlesome 
legislation. ' The best government is that 
which governs least.' Surely, if your reason- 
ing is good concerning days in the week, it is 
equally good concerning hours in the day ! " 

This argument has been curiously and admir- 
ably anticipated in the speech of Macaulay in 
defence of the principle of a ten-hour law, in 
trie House of Commons, in 1846. The right 
and expediency of guarding the liberty to rest, 
by legally limiting the time of labor, was vin- 
dicated against this very objection by the 
analogy of the Sunday laws. Objectors said, 
" If this ten-hour limitation be good for the 



Sunday Legislation. 41 

working-people, rely on it that they will them- 
selves establish it without any law." — "Why 
not reason," answered Macaulay, — "why not 
reason in the same way about the Sunday ? 
Why not say, * If it be a good thing for the 
people of London to shut their shops one day 
in seven, they will find it out, and will shut 
their shops without a law ? * Sir, the answer 
is obvious. I have no doubt, that, if you were 
to poll the shop-keepers of London, you would 
find an immense majority, probably a hundred 
to one, in favor of closing shops on the Sun- 
day : and yet it is absolutely necessary to give 
to the wish of the majority the sanction of a 
law ; for, if there were no such law, the minor- 
ity, by opening their shops, would soon forces 
the majority to do the same." * 

How curiously the wheel of this discussion 
has come around, so that now there is a party 
of people soberly alleging what that famous 
orator enunciated as an absurdity, and claim- 
ing as an axiom what he proved from the 
premises which they are trying to knock 
away ! 

1 Speeches of Macaulay, ed. Tauchnitz, ii. 208, 209. The whole 
speech is worth reading for its close relation to our subject. 



42 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

This whole subject gets its liveliest illus- 
tration when, from time to time, some one of 
those vocations which the general convenience 
allows to be excepted from the general law of 
Sunday rest seeks to be included within the 
law. Repeatedly, for instance, there have been 
memorials from all the barbers of a town, ask- 
ing to have their own shops shut by law. Very 
absurd, isn't it? If they want their shops 
shut, why don't they shut them ? This was 
the view taken by one enterprising young col- 
ored man in a Connecticut town, not long ago. 
There was a movement, among his competitors 
in the profession, to have all the barbers' shops 
shut on Sunday. "All right!" he said, "you 
go right on, and shut your shops. Never mind 
me." And so all the shops had to be kept 
open. 

Another illustration of a like character comes 
to me from a similar quarter. A coal-dealer, 
near a certain steamboat-landing, finds that in 
the competitions of business his Sunday rest 
has been completely taken away from him. 
All the little tugs and propellers find that they 
can get their coal put in on Sunday, and so 



Sunday Legislation. 43 

they come Sunday in preference to any other 
day. Says he, " I don't so much as get time 
to go to early mass, and I am compelled to 
keep busy from morning till night. I can't 
refuse them ; for if I do they will quit me 
altogether, and I shall lose my business. / 
wish to heaven that some one would prosecute 
me!" A clearer illustration of the value of 
the law of rest for all, in securing the liberty 
of rest for each one, can hardly be asked for, 
than this case of a man who wants to be 
prosecuted himself in order to protect him 
from the necessity of doing what he does not 
want to do, but has to do because he is at 
liberty to do it. 

I put it to the whole trade of labor-reformers, 
who want to begin their reforms by breaking 
down the best existing safeguard of the work- / 
ingman's liberty of rest and leisure, — I put 
the question to them, and beg for an answer 
if there is one to be given. After you have 
succeeded — I do not say in amending or re- 
pealing, but in defying and nullifying, our six- 
day law, how much good is your eight-hour 
law likely to do you, supposing that you get it 



44 Sunday Observance and Su?tday Laws. 

passed ? You succeed, by mere defiant law- 
breaking, in trampling down a statute vener- 
able with use, anchored deep in the traditions 
of the people, and consecrated by many a sol- 
emn religious sanction. And you propose to 
set up in place of it a novel invention of your 
own, called an "eight-hour law." Do you sup- 
pose, that, when you have taught the public 
how little you care for law when it interferes 
with your convenience, you will find it an easy 
matter to enforce law against others when it 
interferes with their convenience ? 

But here I wish, with perfect candor, to 
answer a question which does not seem to 
me to be adequately answered by the average 
" evangelical Christian " in his arguments on 
this subject. Our German friend will ask 
whether it is not possible to make a distinc- 
tion between the prohibition of labor, and the 
prohibition of recreation and orderly and inno- 
cent amusement. And my answer to him is 
(whatever yours may be), " Yes, it is possible, 
though it may be difficult ; and, whenever as 
orderly citizens you choose to move in this 
direction for amendments of the law, we are 



Sunday Legislation. 45 

ready to discuss your proposals with simple 
reference to the greatest good of the greatest 
number." It is useless for us to say that pub- 
lic cfrnusements, however quiet and orderly,v 
involve labor on some one's part. So does 
public worship. It is labor to blow a church- 
organ, as much as to blow a concert-hall organ. 
No legislation pretends to protect every ones 
Sunday rest. The general principle is modi- 
fied by considerations of public convenience 
and expediency. There is nothing in the 
world, then, to hinder us from entering into 
the candid discussion of any proposed amend- 
ment intended to relax the rigor of the law 
concerning amusements, while still guarding, 
as far as possible, the provisions of the law 
concerning labor. Some of you will object, 
perhaps, that, in our duties as citizens, we are 
bound to be governed by the divine teachings, 
and that legislation ought to be conformed to 
the word of God. Agreed. But then, noth- 
ing is so clearly revealed in the word of God, 
whether in Old Testament or in New, if men 
would but see it, as this, — that the divine rule 
of public legislation is the rule of expediency, 



46 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

and not the rule of absolute right and wrong. 
The divine example of public legislation is to 
give "laws that are not good," when such laws 
are, on the whole, the best that the case ad- 
mits. Legislation is never more contrary to 
the word of God, than when it is rigorously 
conformed to the word of God, without regard 
to expediency, local and temporary. I repeat 
it, then : there is nothing in our convictions of 
religious duty to hinder us from candidly dis- 
cussing any measure that may be considered 
to be for the good of society, and looking to- 
wards a relaxation of the ' Sunday law respect- 
ing amusements, while maintaining it in vigor 
respecting labor. Possibly this might be ac- 
complished by carefully amending the law. 
But one thing is perfectly sure, it cant be 
done by breaking the law. You cannot break 
this statute half across, and leave the other 
half sound. Some of these fine days, as busi- 
ness grows brisk, you will get back from your 
Sunday excursion or beer-garden, and find a 
notice that next Sunday, owing to pressure 
of business, the factory will run, or the shop 
will be open, and that you are wanted for a 



^undw islation. 47 

clay's work. And if you think that then you 
will be able to plead, for your rest and your 
liberty, the very statute that you have defi- 
antly broken for your amusement, you will have 
ample time and opportunity to find out your 
mistake. 

Here, after all, we face this subject in its 
gravest aspect. For I say it with all respect 
to this assembly, yet not expecting you to 
agree with me, — expecting, rather, that some 
of you will be shocked when you hear it said, 
— that the sanctity of the Sabbath is not so 
serious a matter as the sanctity of human law 
and government ; that the damage and peril 
to society, the church, the state, and the affront 
to the authority of God, in the habitual pub- 
lic defiance of the Sunday laws, consist less 
in the violation of the commandment than they 
do in the violation of the statute. The divine 
authority less distinctly binds us to the com- 
mandment than it binds us to the statute. 
There are, amongst us, citizens of many dif- 
ferent religions, and citizens of no religion at 
all ; and, even among Christian citizens, there 
are the widest conscientious variations as to 



48 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

the binding force of the fourth commandment 
on the individual and the state ; and still fur- 
ther variations as to the nature of the duties 
which that commandment enjoins, if it is bind- 
ing. You may lament these variations ; you 
may hold them blameworthy ; but you cannot 
deny the fact that they exist ; and it will have 
a very wholesome effect on our dealings with 
the matter, to look this inexorable fact dis- 
tinctly in the face, and to bear habitually in 
mind, that the traditionary notions of sabbati- 
cal duty to which we are accustomed are the 
notions only of a very small party in the Chris- 
tian church. But here is a point on which the 
divine will is unmistakable, — a point on which 
there is no room for variation among Chris- 
tians, or among good citizens ; to wit, that the 
laws of man are to be obeyed as under God's 
authority, and for God's sake. The peril of 
the present time is not half so much that we 
are becoming a nation of Sabbath-breakers, 
as that we are becoming — as a well-known 
writer has recently said — "a nation of law- 
breakers." l The question, whether the Sun- 

1 Dangerous Tendencies in American Society. 



Sunday Legislation. 49 

day laws shall be amended, or even repealed, 
and the common rest-day of rich and poor be 
left unprotected from the rapacity of commer- 
cial and industrial competition, is a question 
which, grave and portentous as it is, it is never- 
theless possible to contemplate with equanim- 
ity. Whenever this question comes up, we are 
bound to meet our fellow-citizens with patient 
argument, and abide the arbitrament of the 
ballot-box. Under our form of government, 
if the majority, on such a point, will be fools, 
there is no way but to let them learn their folly 
by the consequences. But to this other ques- 
tion, whether law, while it is law, shall be 
enforced and obeyed, there is but one answer 
compatible with the dignity or life of the state. 

The argument which I have now set forth 
approves the Sunday laws of any state only so 
far as those laws confine themselves, with sim- 
plicity and good faith : first, to maintaining the 
day of rest from labor as a universal privilege ; 
and, secondly, to taking the necessary precau- 
tions lest the privilege be abused to the detri- 
ment of public order and morals. For any 



50 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

thing beyond this, these laws must find their 
defence — if there is any rational defence to be 
found — in some other line of reasoning. But 
there can be no higher act of wisdom on the 
part of those who desire to see the universal 
repose and quiet order of the New-England 
Sabbath day revived and perpetuated, than, of 
their own accord, to see to it that our Sunday 
laws are cleared of every thing which they 
ought not to contain. The early legislation of 
New England on this subject was undoubtedly 
directed, in some particulars, to the enforce- 
ment of a religious observance of the day. 
This was consistent with the State-Church, or 
rather the Church-State, notions of that time : 
it is utterly irreconcilable with our own prin- 
ciples. I do not know that any vestige of it 
remains. Judging from the digest of the Sun- 
day laws of New England, lately published by 
my friend, Walter Learned, 1 our statute-books 
are clear of any remainder of it. If not, they 
ought to be. 

Further, we are suffering, both in the com- 
munity and in private consciences, the re-action 

1 In Good Company, No. 2. 



Sunday Legislation. 51 

from overstrained statements concerning sab- 
batical duty. There is a canon of Sunday 
observance, written, not in the scriptures of 
either Testament, but in the Westminster 
Catechism and the traditions of the elders, 
commanding that "the entire time" that can 
be spared from works of necessity or mercy 
shall be "spent in acts of worship, public or 
private." I do not speak of this as a rule that 
is seriously professed by any of us. On the 
contrary, we have, one and all, abandoned it 
as a rule of our own action ; and we keep it, if 
at all, only for torturing tender consciences, 
and for judging our neighbors by. But it 
would not be altogether strange if the spirit 
of it might be found lurking here and there 
in some neglected corner of the statute-book. 
If so, it is of high importance to the success 
of our cause that it be exorcised. 

Further still, it is not an unheard-of thing 
for earnest and zealous labors in behalf of a 
good cause to become infected with that other 
spirit, which has been alleged to have Boston 
for its metropolis, but which has its spheres of 
lively activity in many a place beside, — the 



52 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

spirit of ''malignant philanthropy." It is this 
spirit that is slanderously imputed to the Eng- 
lish Puritans, who interfered with bear-baiting, 
it is said, less out of pity to the bear than out 
of spite at the enjoyment of the bystanders. 
How naturally it attaches itself to such mat- 
ters as we have in hand, might be illustrated 
by many instances ; but it is enough to take 
a single one from Mr. Gilbert Hamerton. He 
tells us of a certain neighborhood in Scotland, 
along the shore of a loch which it was some- 
times necessary to cross on Sunday. The local 
code of ethics permitted the crossing in such 
cases, but on condition that it should be made 
with a row-boat, not with a sail-boat. The row- 
boat involved, indeed, more labor ; but the sail- 
boat might involve enjoyment, and this was a 
thing to be prevented at any sacrifice ! If our 
Sunday laws are to be preserved and enforced, 
it must be made unmistakably plain that the 
object, both of the law and of its enforcement, 
is not to prevent enjoyment, but to secure the 
universal privilege of rest from labor without 
detriment to the good order and morals of 
society. No reasonable person will deny that 



Sunday Legislation. 53 

it is competent for the same law which inter- 
feres to liberate men from labor, to interfere 
to protect society from the disorderly abuse 
of this liberty. The question of the manner 
and degree of either interference is an open 
question, to be decided by considerations of 
expediency. 

We cannot, fellow-citizens, keep it too dis- 
tinctly in mind that this part of the Sabbath 
question, the matter of Sunday laws, is a mat- 
ter of government and police, — a political 
matter; and I know of no way of carrying 
political measures, in a republic, but to have 
votes enough. There is, indeed, a certain class 
of reformatory politicians who have a mystical 
idea of carrying elections without votes, — to 
whom there is no scripture in all the Bible so 
precious as that of the thinning-out of Gideon's 
army. These are men of faith, who believe 
that a few warm-hearted, earnest citizens, that 
will march fearlessly and vigorously up to the 
polls, and jam their tickets into the ballot-box 
with sufficient energy, can easily outvote ten 
times their number. It is well for us to leave 
this sort of imbecility to the school of profes- 



54 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

sional reformers to whom it belongs, and coolly 
to take the measure of the difficulties of the 
situation, — for it has difficulties. The meas- 
ures that are to be carried and enforced, let us 
remember, will not be carried by the votes 
exclusively of evangelical Christians of ortho- 
dox doctrinal views, — that is, not without a 
very extraordinary revival in the mean time. 
It is well that we should ask ourselves whose 
the other votes are to be. It is well, for every 
reason, that we should put ourselves on ground 
so solid, so broad, so unselfish and unpartisan, 
so clearly right, that no reasonable man can 
object to it as unreasonable ; that we should 
refuse to allow this great social interest to be 
complicated with other questions ; in short, 
that we should narrow the issue, and widen the 
basis of co-operation. 



Note. — The following letter was addressed to the 
Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut Legislature, in 
support of the writer's memorial for a Commission of 
Inquiry concerning the Sunday Laws. 

Gentlemen, — Until the latest moment, I 
have been in hopes of appearing before you 



Sunday Legislation. 55 

to-morrow, in conformity with your invitation, 
to give the reasons for my petition for a com- 
mission of inquiry as to the need of an amend- 
ment of the Sunday laws of the State. I sub- 
mit the more willingly to the urgent personal 
reasons which prevent my going to Hartford, 
because I hope that my written communication 
will accomplish all that is needful, with a saving 
of the time of the committee. 

Suffer me, at the outset, to forestall a possi- 
ble misconception. I do not seek or desire any 
enforcement of a religious observance of Sun- 
day. The objects of Sunday legislation should 
be simply and solely these two : first, to secure, 
as nearly as possible, to every citizen the priv- 
ilege of rest from labor ; secondly, to provide 
that the general rest of the community shall 
not be abused to the detriment of good order 
and morals. If the law goes beyond this, with 
any needless interference with convenience, 
pleasure, or even amusement, it thereby tends 
to defeat its own permanent effectiveness ; and 
the pretence which is clamorously made, year 
after year, that the law is thus excessive, is 
itself a reason, not indeed for hasty amendment, 



56 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

but for deliberate and careful inquiry, such as 
the petition asks for. 

But the main reason for a commission of 
inquiry is that alleged in the petition ; to wit, 
that the laws in question not only are openly 
and habitually violated, but in some cases, 
when the enforcement of them has been at- 
tempted, have been insolently defied and nulli- 
fied. It is obvious that the successful defiance 
of the law by influential corporations does more 
than to retrench certain clauses that stand in 
the way of their convenience : it practically 
abrogates the statute, with its unspeakable 
blessings to the community ; it inflicts a shame- 
ful insult on the State, and weakens that 
respect for the laws which all good citizens are 
bound to cherish. These are grave reasons, I 
do not say for legislation, but for inquiry. 

The most flagrant and insolent violations of 
the law are Sunday steamboat excursions, in 
defence of which considerations of humanity 
and public good are sometimes urged with 
apparent seriousness. Such considerations may 
much better be urged in favor of amending the 
law, than of defying and nullifying the law. 



Sunday Legislation. 57 

And I submit to you, gentlemen, that the alle- 
gation of them is a sufficient reason for inquiry 
into the truth of them. A commission duly 
authorized might easily ascertain whether such 
excursions, as now conducted in violation of 
law, are really the occasions of harmless recre- 
ation and refreshment that they are claimed to 
be, or orgies of debauchery such as they are 
alleged sometimes to be ; and might furnish to 
a future General Assembly materials for a wise 
judgment on the question, whether if they were 
made lawful, so that they might be conducted / 
by law-abiding citizens instead of law-breakers, 
and vigilantly policed, instead of being ex- 
empted, as now, from all police supervision 
whatever, the change would be for the general 
advantage. The question is an open and legiti- 
mate one, and of grave importance. 

To sum up, then : every argument that is 
used, either in crimination or in defence, is an 
argument in favor of legislative inquiry; and 
inquiry is all that the petition asks. 

I beg leave to add one word more, that may 
indicate the spirit in which the petition is 
offered. It is my personal conviction that the 



58 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

inquiry proposed would result in amendments 
of the Sunday laws in the direction of a larger 
liberty ; that in some details these laws are not 
conformed to the state of public opinion, nor 
to the exigencies of modern society, especially 
in large towns ; further, that there are trace- 
able in them some remaining vestiges of an 
ascetic spirit, and of a disposition to enforce 
< religious duties by law. I should hope to see 
all such faults radically removed, as the result 
of the measure sought for in the petition. 
I have the honor to be, gentlemen, 
With great respect, 

Your fellow-citizen, 
LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. 
Norwich, Feb. 28, 1881. 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 59 



ENFORCEMENT OF SUNDAY LAWS. 

SPEECH TO THE CITIZENS OF NORWICH, MONDAY 
EVENING, AUGUST u, 187Q, JUST AFTER THE PUBLIC 
DEFIANCE OF THE LAW OF CONNECTICUT SECUR- 
ING A WEEKLY DAY OF REST. 

FELLOW CITIZENS,— Within a few 
months past, the cities of New London 
and Norwich have begun to grow accustomed 
to sights and sounds with which formerly they 
have been unfamiliar. It has once been a mat- 
ter of thankfulness to God, of worthy pride in 
view of the condition of other peoples, — a mat- 
ter of admiration to thoughtful travellers from 
foreign lands, that here the first day of the 
week was a day of rest and quietness. On 
that day the peace of God settled down over 
all the land. , The din of labor ceased, and the 
din of strife and of merry-making ; and a few 
quiet hours were given in which the poorest 
home might be made happy by the gathering of 
the family, and the most engrossed and toil- 



60 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

burdened soul might at least have its opportu- 
nity, if it would, to worship God undisturbed 
by calls to labor or solicitations to public rev- 
elry. This was the glory and beauty of the 
American, — the New England Sabbath. None 
felt it so profoundly as those who had grown 
up in lands where it was unknown. Among 
those who have come hither from distant parts 
of the world to study the causes that have 
given to America her pre-eminence among the 
nations, and to New England her pre-eminence 
among the American States, there are few who 
have not been able to recognize that the Amer- 
ican superiority, not merely in moral and social 
order and in general intelligence, but even in 
the mere matter of productive industry, was 
largely due to the institution of the Sabbath 
calm and rest, as inherited from our fathers, 
and guarded by law from interruption and 
abuse. We loved and gloried in our quiet Sun- 
day, and thought of the goodly heritage that 
should be the birthright of our children. 

This glory is departed. I do not say it is 
endangered. It is gone. The New England 
Sabbath in New London and Norwich within 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 61 

these few months has ceased to be. And 
whether it has ceased forever is for the citizens 
of these two towns to say. If they say noth- 
ing, and do nothing, within a few weeks more 
it has ceased forever. Individuals and fami- 
lies and congregations will continue, doubtless, 
without molestation, or without much molesta- 
tion, to follow their several convictions of duty 
concerning the day, as Christian families and 
churches do in heathen countries. But the 
New England Sabbath as a public institution, 
guarded by public law from invasion and abuse, 
is — dead. This revolution, the most momen- 
tous, the most disastrous, in our history, will 
shortly have been accomplished by your acqui- 
escence. And you will be able, by and by, to 
say to your children, " It was in my day, dur- 
ing my active citizenship, during my pastorship, 
during my term of public office, and by my 
dereliction of personal and official duty, that 
Norwich lost her immemorial glory and privi- 
lege pi a restful and peaceful Sunday, — that 
the law on which it depended was suffered to 
lapse without one effort to assert its dignity 
and validity, and all for lack of one resolute 



62 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws, 

citizen, and one unflinching official in the right 
place : it lapsed, not by negligence or evasion 
or furtive violation, unnoticed, winked at or 
disregarded, — the law might endure all these 
and still be law, — it lapsed through the impu- 
dent defiance of the law by a petty steamboat 
corporation, before whose open challenge, ' We 
intend to violate this statute, and what are you 
going to do about it ? ' the citizens held their 
peace, and the authorities were dumb. Then it 
was that the law of the quiet Sabbath died ; for 
the law that could be insolently defied by this 
corporation was incapable of being enforced 
thereafter against anybody. And when this 
law was thus insulted, overridden, trampled 
down, all law suffered with it, and government 
itself suffered a lasting dishonor. And, to this 
irreparable damage to our homes and native 
land, we, by our acquiescence, were parties and 
accomplices." Go, say this over to yourself as 
it will sound twenty years hence ! Go, take it 
to your children and grandchildren as a part of 
the record of your life ! Go, rehearse it to 
yourself as you will give it in at the judgment- 
seat of God, when you give account of your 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 63 

duty as a citizen ! For this is what is meant 
when, fortnight by fortnight, in open, confessed 
defiance of the law of the State, the excursion 
steamer, with public announcement, with its 
instruments of music, with its private stores 
of whiskey, and with its complement of prosti- 
tutes, waits on Sunday morning at the dock to 
solicit the company of your children and your 
brothers and your husbands, and when on Sun- 
day night she vomits out upon the dock again 
her passengers debauched and drunk ; * and 

1 " The excursion of the Ella last Sunday was extensively patron- 
ized ; and many of the participants, before the boat reached her wharf 
at night, became very boisterous, not to say drunk, thus tending to 
destroy the quiet enjoyment and rest supposed to be the leading 
features of a Sunday trip. A perfectly honorable and unprejudiced 
gentleman of this city, accompanied by his wife, was on board the 
boat, supposing that the excursionists would at least pay some respect 
to the day, or, in any event, that the officers of the boat would 
see that law and order prevailed. He says, that, long before the 
steamer reached her wharf in this city, he was heartily ashamed of the 
company in which he found himself, and on no account would he 
again patronize the craft with her present management on a Sunday 
excursion. Drunkenness and disorder were quickly visible on board, 
in the old men as well as the young ; and a general hilarity seemed to 
be diffused among the party. No liquor was sold on the boat, but 
the thirsty passengers were frequently seen cooling their tongues with 
hearty draughts from capacious pocket flasks. A company of women 
from a house near the Norwich and Worcester Depot (of which some 



64 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

you, meanwhile, sit quietly in your churches 
and prayer-meetings, and dream of serving 
God, when, by all the duties he has laid upon 
you as a citizen, God is calling you to serve 
him elsewhere and otherwise. 

I beg you to remark, that in all that I have 
said thus far concerning the Sabbath rest, and 
in all I have yet to say, I have said and shall 
say no word of it as an institution of God, or 

of the 'fathers' have testified that it is a 'quiet and orderly place ' ) 
were along, and during the day became so exhilarated that one of 
them had to be led off the boat on her return to this city. The 
bathing scenes and conduct of this party while at the Hill are also 
said to have been scandalous. When a party of young gentlemen — 
so called — induce a comrade who has but recently entered the walks 
of married life to leave the side of his newly-made bride, despite her 
expostulations, and, after plying him with liquor, send him back to 
her drunken and brawling, and then laugh at her tears, it is certainly a 
question whether or not Sunday excursions are of benefit, especially 
those of this sort." — Norwich correspondence of the New Haven 
Register, Aug. J, 18 J 9. 

The character of these excursions, infamous as it has been, makes 
no essential part of my argument. It is quite indifferent to me 
whether the steamboat company claim that these orgies were an affair 
of their own, and not to be imputed as an unavoidable incident to a 
Sunday excursion ; or that the company are not to blame because 
on Sunday excursions such things cannot be helped. This is an affair 
between the company and its customers, with which the public has 
little concern. Both parties are " in the same boat." 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 65 

the subject of a divine command. For I am 
speaking to you as citizens with reference to 
your duties to society. The command of God, 
applying to the individual conscience, has rea- V 
sons and arguments and sanctions of its own. 
And, if I could but get the serious attention of 
that multitude of merry-makers, I would gladly 
speak to them of God's w r ord and will in this 
thing, how reasonable and benevolent they are, 
and, in their true meaning, how far from the 
austerity that has sometimes been imputed to 
them or superinduced upon them. But I am 
not speaking to them about their private duty 
to God, but to you about your civil duty to the 
community. And it is not your duty as a 
citizen to enforce God's law upon your neigh- 
bors, but to sustain huipan law, which God 
requires men to obey, and citizens to sustain, 
and magistrates to execute. As a Christian, as 
a man, you have to do with the Sabbath as a 
religious institution. As a citizen, you have 
only to do with it as a civil institution. As a 
citizen, you are not charged with enforcing the 
Decalogue, only with sustaining the statute. 
This is not a religious matter at all, except as 



66 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws, 

it is your religious duty to be faithful to your 
secular responsibility as a citizen. 

You thought, perhaps, that the laws concern- 
ing Sunday were laws prescribing" a precept of 
the Christian religion, concerning the obliga- 
tion of which some consciences might be in 
doubt. Not at all. What word is there in the 
statutes that would need to be changed if this 
country were Buddhist or Confucian or Athe- 
ist instead of Christian ? What word is there 
about worship, in the statute, except to provide 
that it shall not be molested ? The law makes 
no attempt to enforce religion upon Sunday. 
It simply institutes a weekly civil holiday, and 
surrounds it with safeguards such as the inter- 
ests of society require. It makes no preamble ; 
it sets up no pretension to divine right in this 
law, beside the divine right that belongs to 
every righteous enactment of constituted au- 
thority. Nobody denies the competency of the 
State to establish this weekly holiday ; nobody 
asks to have it abrogated. There are not men 
enough to call themselves a party, who do not 
want Sunday maintained by law as a day of 
rest. Only one business corporation says, 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 67 

" If only we can do business while all the rest 
are restrained from it, we shall make a lot of 
money. We don't want the law repealed. 
We want it enforced against all other business 
establishments. We want the shops and fac- 
tories shut up by law, and the employees com- 
pelled to rest. We want other companies to 
show a decent regard for right and duty. 
And then what we want for ourselves is to 
break the law. We can influence votes. We 
can have a mob to clamor for us. We can 
get demagogues very cheap to howl for the 
dear people and the poor workingman. We 
will break the law ; and touch us if you dare ! " 
And I don't suppose you do dare, do you ? 
You would not really have the courage, would 
you, citizens, magistrates, of Norwich, to op- 
pose a steamboat company, when it expected to 
make a great deal of money by breaking the 
law ? Frankly, I do not believe you would. 
I have no strong expectation of it on your 
part. 

Allow me to say just here in passing, by way 
of personal explanation, that I think my posi- 
tion and purpose in this matter have been very 



68 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

much mistaken by the public generally. I 
don't care for the mistake on my own account, 
but it seems desirable for the sake of the pub- 
lic that they should understand the matter cor- 
rectly. It seems to be conceived that I have 
undertaken to dictate to the people of Nor- 
wich how they shall spend their Sundays ; and, 
in particular, that I have started with the reso- 
lution and expectation of breaking up the Sun- 
day pleasure excursions of the steamer "Ella," 
in which some persons wish me success, and 
the large majority (I judge) prophesy that I 
shall meet with defeat and disappointment. 
Now, this is a misconception. I have, in the 
exercise of my unquestionable rights as a 
citizen, taken certain steps which may, or may 
not, result in the stopping of these excursions 
by the due course of law. If these steps do 
so result, it will be no affair of mine, and no 
triumph of mine. If they fail of this result, 
I shall be neither defeated nor disappointed, 
nor even surprised. For I have been distinctly 
warned, from the beginning, that I was enter- 
ing on a fruitless experiment ; that the author- 
ities would not sustain me ; that the newspaper 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 69 

would not sustain me ; that public opinion would 
not sustain me ; that the law, to which I had 
referred the matter, could not be enforced. I 
have gone forward with this distinct under- 
standing. And, if any of you would like to 
know why I have gone forward, I would like 
to have you know ; and I will tell you, as briefly 
as possible. 

It is almost exactly twelve months ago that 
a gratifying invitation was pressed upon me to 
come to Norwich and settle permanently as a 
minister of the gospel. As I was considering 
the question, it was represented to me more 
than once, from various quarters, that Norwich 
was a place of bad character for crime and 
lawlessness. (This, of course, was no reason 
for not coming hither to preach the gospel ; 
although it might be a reason for not bring- 
ing one's children with him to be educated 
here.) From that day to this, I have heard 
these accusations against the character of the 
town repeated, publicly and privately, often 
abroad, sometimes by citizens of high standing 
at home. I must say that some things have 
come to my knowledge since my coming here 



jo Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

that tend to confirm these reproaches. " Do 
I mean the Cobb trial ? " No, I don't mean the 
Cobb trial. That is an honor to the character 
of the town, — not a disgrace. Jt is not the 
cases that you try and punish that debase the 
character of the town and smirch its good name ; 
but the cases that you don't punish, that you 
don't try, that you don't allow to be tried, that 
(so the criminal's defenders impudently boast) 
you don't dare to allow to be tried. I have the 
astounding document in my possession which 
shows how, in a crime of the blackest turpi- 
tude, a blood-guilty felony, in which the crim- 
inal was held for trial, the evidence was ready, 
the prosecuting officers were ready and confi- 
dent of conviction, the courts were ready, and 
the law was clear, twoscore of the very best 
citizens of this town interposed to arrest the 
course of law, to throw the protection of their 
personal influence over the criminal, and to 
condone the crime. Such things as these on 
the one hand. On the other hand, I need not 
recount what beautiful and honorable evidences 
one meets with here, of public spirit and virtue, 
and of love of law and order. You will not 



Enfortement of Sunday Laws. ji 

wonder that I was perplexed by the two con- 
trary testimonies, and felt that I would like to 
know — and I am sure you will not consider 
it an idle curiosity — I would like to know just 
what sort of place Norwich was, on this ques- 
tion of law and order. And right here, at 
hand, is the very opportunity of finding out. 
I have been hearing, almost ever since I came 
to the town, the protests of good citizens about 
the unlawful Sunday excursions that had been 
lately instituted. People were indignant about 
them, it was said. Persons high in office char- 
acterized them as a nuisance and a shame. 
A memorial against them, I am told, was 
signed last year by several hundreds of re- 
spectable names. Here, then, was just the 
case that would show what Norwich was, 
— whether it was the lawless, crime-breeding 
place that some alleged, or whether it is a 
place where good citizens, demanding the en- 
forcement of the laws, can secure it. Now, 
you will understand what my position is in 
this matter. I have not undertaken to enforce 
the Sunday laws. This is not my business. 
I have not resolved to put a stop to the Sun- 



72 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

day excursions. Persons of experience and 
responsibility tell me it cannot be done, — and 
perhaps they know. What I have undertaken, 
in the discharge of my duty as a citizen, — 
less my duty than that of many others, but 
mine when all the rest have failed, — is to put 
this matter in a shape to be tried, and so to 
find out what sort of a place Norwich is, — 
what sort of citizens it has, what sort of gov- 
ernment it has. And I hope to know in about 
three weeks. 

It is not, then, with any sanguine expecta- 
tions of a visible, practical result that I press 
upon you this 

(I.) First point, that the fact to which I call 
your attention is a bold, insolent, defiant vio- 
lation of the law. We do not raise the ques- 
tion, — we cannot raise the question, — we 
cannot entertain the question just at this mo- 
ment, — whether it is a good law, in its par- 
ticulars, or a bad law. Farther on, I shall 
have something to say on this point ; and by 
and by, when in a loyal way, as good citizens, 
they may choose to raise the question of repeal 
or amendment in due course of legislation, we 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 73 

shall be ready, I am sure, to go into this ques- 
tion thoroughly, and in no unfriendly or illiberal 
spirit. But, so long as the situation is one of 
open defiance of the authority of law, we have 
nothing to do but to try conclusions between 
law and lawlessness, and find out which is the 
stronger : and, if we are beaten (as very prob- 
ably we shall be), amendment or repeal of the 
law is of the very slightest consequence ; for 
law is dead. The steamboat company is King ; 
the howling demagogue is its prime minister ; 
the mob is its standing army; and we, who 
never were in bondage to any man, are its 
subjects. If this be so, we want to know it ; 
and we therefore make our contention on this 
single point. This is the law. We claim, we 
demand, — no, I will not presume too far, for 
I do not know where you stand in this matter, 
— /claim and /demand the enforcement of it 
as my right as a citizen. And I expect to be 
refused if law-abiding and law-sustaining citi- 
zens are only timid enough, and the govern- 
ment is inactive and unfaithful enough, and the 
steamboat corporation is bold enough and dis- 
loyal enough, and the baser sort are clamor- 



74 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

ous enough, and ignorant enough of their own 
interests. 

And now, having defined our one main issue, 
we are in a position to add, 

(II.) In the second place, that it is an aggra- 
vation of the offence of these open and defiant 
law-breakers, that they are attacking a good 
and salutary law. I speak, not from the reli- 
gious point of view, but from the point of view 
of any good citizen, when I say that the par- 
ticular laws now defied are, in general, good 
and salutary laws, — laws of inexpressible value 
to every interest of society and every class of 
society. In general, I say ; for it is obvious 
that these ancient statutes do require amend- 
ment in detail to fit them to circumstances 
and conditions that did not exist when they 
were made, to the requirements of large towns 
and modern society. And, whenever it is de- 
cided that law can be enforced, I, for one, shall 
gladly join in seeking the amendment of them. 
If it is decided, on the other hand, that the 
law can be successfully defied, it is merely 
frivolous to talk of amending or repealing or 
enacting at all. The Legislature, on this sub- 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 75 

ject, may be interesting to the public as a 
debating-society ; but the public has no other 
interest in its proceedings. 

What, then, is the inexpressible value to the 
public of these laws which are now defied ? 
This : that they guarantee to the whole com- 
munity that which could not exist without 
them, — a public day of rest. If this should 
be lost, the community in all its classes, but 
most of all in its poorer classes, will lament 
it with long, perhaps with unavailing, regret. 
But if these laws are successfully defied, and 
so broken down, your day of rest is lost ; for 
it is only by virtue of these laws that the day 
of general public rest subsists. A weekly day 
of rest is the universal desire. Every man, 
woman, and child wants it, and would feel per- 
sonally aggrieved and injured if it should be 
taken away. And the way in which this uni- 
versal desire is secured to all, is by means of 
a. law on the statute-book, which (however it 
may be neglected or evaded in some cases) 
stands on the statute-book in full vigor, and is 
ready to be enforced when the case requires, 
and is actually enforced whenever a single 



76 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

citizen, however humble and however solitary, 
demands the enforcement of it as his right, 
and insists upon his demand, as I do insist 
to-night. 

But I am ready to meet the objection which 
some of you have it at your tongue's end to put : 
"What is the need of a law to secure what 
everybody wants ? If everybody wants it, will 
it not come of itself ? Will not the unanimous 
desire of the people, that one day of the week 
be kept free from the encroachments of busi- 
ness, be a sufficient security for this without 
the aid of law ? " 

I answer, Yes; just so much as the unani- 
mous desire of the property owners on Main 
Street would, without law, preserve the line 
of the street from encroachments, — just so 
much, and no more. It is the general interest 
of the whole property, and every part of it, on 
both sides of the way, that the width of that 
street should not be reduced. You could get 
a remonstrance, signed by every person in the 
city that could hold a pen, against permitting 
owners of frontage on that street to build out 
on it a single foot ; and all the owners them- 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. yj 

selves would join in the remonstrance. What 
is the need of any law, then, to protect the line 
of that street ? If everybody wants it, it will 
take care of itself, won't it ? And yet there is 
not a man of you that knows how to pretend to 
be so dull as not to see that it is only by the 
force of law that the object of the unanimous 
desire can be secured, — a law ready to be en- 
forced, actually enforced on demand, and that 
cannot be defied. There may be furtive and 
casual violations of the law : these may be over- 
looked and neglected, and the law will not lose 
its force thereby, nor the rights of the public 
be impaired. But let there be one man or one 
corporation sufficiently strong, rich, influential 
of votes, and sufficiently insolent and unscru- 
pulous to say, and say successfully, " I am 
going to build out three feet in my front, and 
what are you going to do about it?" — let 
but one humble citizen make his complaint 
to authorities and courts in vain, and the line 
of your street is gone. Encroachment will 
follow encroachment, the encroachment of one 
excusing and necessitating the encroachment 
of his neighbor, until the thoroughfare is 



78 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

choked, and the interest of all has been de- 
feated by the selfishness of one. And allow 
me to add here (for it meets an objection that 
may impose on some minds), that it makes no 
difference at all whether the citizen complain- 
ing, and complaining in vain, of the infraction 
of the public right, is personally injured, or 
whether anybody is actually injured, by this 
particular encroachment, or whether the com- 
plaint is made out of solicitude for the future 
welfare of the town. Suppose, even, that the 
encroachment pretends to be for the public 
convenience, — that the benevolent citizen pro- 
poses to build a drinking fountain in front of 
his shop, for instance ; so long as the encroach- 
ment is made without law, against law, and in 
successful defiance of the law, invoked for its 
removal, it is all the same. The law is down, 
and the street-line is broken for everybody. 

The analogy is strong, and holds at all points. 
The great common rest, opened by a beneficent 
statute in the midst of the toil of the week, is 
like the village green reserved for public re- 
freshment and delight amid the bustling streets 
of a New England village, sacred from the 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 79 

invasion of business, where the children of 
the rich and poor may play alike, where the 
sacred graves of other generations wake tender 
thoughts and holy memories, and amongst 
them the church of Christ invites to prayer 
and praise, — 

" And points with taper spire to heaven." 

The whole people want it : everybody is will- 
ing to respect it, on condition that everybody 
else shall be required to respect it too. Only, 
if there is to be no law about it, and these 
immemorial rights of the public are to be left 
open to a general scramble, in which the ear- 
liest squatter on the public privilege will get 
the best advantage and the biggest share, then 
it is too much to hope from human nature that 
the scramble will not begin. 

Fellow-citizens, the scramble has begun. An 
insolent corporation has squatted on your old 
graveyard, and is digging the foundation for 
his money-making shop among the bones of 
your fathers. It may be difficult for you to 
deal with him ; but, if you give it up, it will 
be impossible for you ever to deal with any 



80 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

other. We propose — / propose — to try the 
strength of the public law against this intruder 
on our common rest. If we fail, as it seems 
to me somewhat likely that we shall, in a year 
or two we shall have competing lines of excur- 
sion steamers, advertising their rival attractions 
in "The Bulletin" (with an encouraging notice 
from the editor, of course) ; and you will wish 
you could stop it, but you can't. By and by 
the railroad companies will enter into the 
business, with new attractions on the bill ; 
and you will wish you could stop them, but 
you can't. Not very long hence, the same 
argument, the necessity of recreation for the 
poor workingman, which requires a Sunday 
excursion in summer, will be found to require 
a Sunday afternoon and evening variety the- 
atre — a quiet and well-conducted variety thea- 
tre — in the winter. And you will ache under 
the infliction, and wish you could abolish it ; 
but you can't. Your law is dead ; and you, 
perhaps, have helped to murder it. 

This is not all. The man who finds now 
that he can make money on Sunday with his 
steamboat, will find before long, if times im- 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 81 

prove and orders crowd him, that he can make 
money on Sunday by running his factory. And 
he will do it, — quietly, of course, but he'll do 
it. And why shouldn't he ? You cannot stop 
him then. Now you can, by law. But he is 
to defy and break down the law that holds him 
back. Society will lament in all its ranks, and 
most of all in its ranks of honest working- 
men, that the blessed common rest is gone, — 
stolen, — no, there is no stealth about it, — 
openly robbed away, before the face of the citi- 
zen and the law, and that now there may be 
seven working-days in the week at the discre- 
tion of the corporation or contractor ; and you 
will mourn the day when you were tickled by 
the offer of a cheap excursion, or bullied by the 
insolence of a steamboat corporation, into giv- 
ing up this priceless heritage of the American 
workingman ; and you will long and long that 
you could get back your one day of rest in 
seven. But you can't. 

This is not all. Let it go abroad in all the 
papers that the Sunday law in all these towns 
has been successfully defied, and about how 
many weeks do you think it will be before 



82 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

some gentleman from New York, with a for- 
eign accent, and a small stock of fancy goods, 
will open a little store on Main Street, for a 
few weeks only, and will let it be understood 
that it will be open, with half a shutter down, 
on Sunday afternoons, after the hours of ser- 
vice, for the benefit of the poor workingmen 
and working-women who really haven't any 
day but Sunday for quiet shopping. You 
won't like this, you storekeepers on the same 
street ; but you cannot stop it. And, what is 
more, you will have to fall in with it sooner or 
later, or retire from business. You will try to 
make a combination against it at first ; but one 
after another will begin to break ranks, and 
send just one clerk for the Sunday business. 
By and by the understanding will be that each 
clerk may be at liberty every second Sunday, 
or at least one Sunday in every month. The 
strong and respectable firms will hold out a 
long time against the new way. They will 
come into it, slowly, reluctantly ; but they will 
come into it. They will have to, or sell out. . 

All this is not coming at once. The force 
of religious principle and the force of habit 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 8$ 

will retard it. And this is the very fact over 
which these law-breakers are inwardly chuck- 
ling as they count their fortnightly gains. 
They don't want it to come all at once. The 
longer the better. What they want is, that 
everybody else should be forced to suspend 
his business, so as to make customers for 
theirs. Work presses you hard in your shop 
or store, and there are not days enough in the 
week for what you can profitably do. But 
Saturday night shuts down ; and the law says 
to you and to your neighbor, and to all your 
competitors in business, Rest there. And all 
the wheels of society and commerce are still, 
and the blessed truce of God comes down like 
a benediction, and the world is at peace. And 
now into the midst of this serene and beauti- 
ful calm comes snarling in the insolent whistle 
of the steamboat company, saying, " I'll break 
all this. The law shall bind you, but it shan't 
bind me. My disloyalty shall grow rich and 
fat on your obedience to law. What do I care 
for you, or your antiquated laws ? What do I 
care what the effect is going to be on Norwich 
five years hence, or one year hence. I make 



84 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

my money now. I am going to do as I please 
about it ; and touch me, if you dare ! " And, 
so far as I am able to judge at present, you 
don't dare. 

There ought to be authority — there is 
authority, there ought to be power, will, and 
courage, with authority — to take this public 
robber of the public privileges by the throat, 
and shake him in the grip of the law until he 
shall let go his felon's hold upon your rights 
and mine. I am not blaming or accusing the 
government and officers of this city for their 
action or non-action in the matter. They 
understand the ground, and I don't. They 
know how strong the steamboat company is, 
and whether it is stronger against the law than 
they are with the law. No man, no officers, 
ought to be blamed for not doing that which is 
simply an impossibility. Perhaps it is true 
that government is not strong enough in Nor- 
wich, that there is not enough of public virtue 
in the citizens behind it, that there is too for- 
midable a force of lawlessness in front of it, 
for it to be possible to execute the law against 
the law-breaker. Perhaps this is true. This 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 85 

is what people say about you ; and this is the 
ground that seems to be taken by leading citi- 
zens, official and unofficial, with whom I have 
conversed. Perhaps it is true. One thing I 
happen to know, however, remotely bearing on 
the subject, which I merely mention as a mat- 
ter of incidental interest. This isrit so at New 
London. I happen to know, on entirely satis- 
factory evidence, that in that city they have a 
public sentiment high enough, and a govern- 
ment strong enough, and a mayor, — his name 
is Thomas Waller, of the Democratic party ; 
and I wish he would move to Norwich, so that 
I might have the opportunity of voting for him 
for something, — a mayor who is brave and reso- 
lute and wilful enough to meet and handle any 
law-breaker, even a steamboat company. I am 
not blaming you here. I am not casting cen- 
sure on the officials of the city. Perhaps the 
case is different in Norwich, and this cannot 
be done here. That is the thing that people 
say about you, and that is the thing that I am 
intending to find out. 

These laws for the protection of Sunday, — 
Blue Laws, as they are called by those who 



86 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

take pleasure in insulting the memory of their 
own fathers, and the character of their native 
State, by repeating the hundred-times-exploded 
calumnies of an old and malignant libel, — 
these ancient statutes, antiquated in phrase- 
ology and details, and plainly requiring amend- 
ment to suit them to conditions of society 
unknown at the time of their enactment, are 
yet, as I have said, of priceless value as secur- 
ing to every man, what he could not have with- 
out them, his weekly day of rest. They are of 
like value for another reason, which I can 
hardly do more than mention, though it is not 
of less importance than the first. 

These laws create a universal public holi- 
day ; and a public holiday is a public peril. 
A necessity it may be, — it is ; but the history 
of all nations shows it to be a dangerous 
necessity. The State which by positive enact- 
ment institutes this dangerous blessing, strik- 
ing off all the common restraints of regular 
industry, is bound to guard it to the utmost 
from abuse. The State has a perfect right to 
make a holiday ; but it has no right to make a 
holiday, and take no precautions against the 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 87 

mischiefs that tend to result from it. It has 
no right with one hand to lock the doors of 
the factory, the shop, the school, against hon- 
est industry and useful pursuits, and turn the 
business population into the street, and then 
with the other hand fling wide the enticing 
portals of temptation. The authority that has 
the right to say to the capitalist, or the corpo- 
ration, or the contractor, you shall not exact 
labor on that day, has a right to say, and is 
bound to say, to the speculator in amusements, 
you shall not start a carousal or a show or an 
excursion on that day. Wives and mothers 
have a right to demand that the beneficent law 
which makes it possible for Sunday to be a 
day of blessed domestic happiness, shall be 
attended by provisions that shall guard it from 
becoming a terror and a curse, — a day when 
they shall sit the long hours through in trem- 
bling, lest at night those whom they love shall 
be tumbled in upon them through the street- 
door, drunk, — that the state shall not loose the 
iron band of industry without at the same time 
tightening the rein of salutary law. Our great 
productive and commercial industries have 



SS Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

rights in the matter. They know the finan- 
cial loss there is in a disordered Sabbath ; and, 
if they are wise, they will take their stand at 
the door of the City Hall, alongside of the 
workmen whose liberty of weekly rest is men- 
aced by the insolence of a law-defying corpo- 
ration, and demand, in a voice not to be 
disregarded, that the State, which interferes to 
take their employees out of business on Satur- 
day night, shall also interfere to save them 
from being returned to business on Monday 
morning exhausted, demoralized, debauched. 

Observe, now, the two points which we have 
reached. We have placed our main contention 
on this simple point, that the act in question is 
a defiant and insolent violation of law. 

Then, secondly, we have noted it as an 
aggravation of the offence, that the law which 
it violates and openly threatens to nullify and 
destroy is a good and salutary law, of priceless 
value to society, to every interest of society, to 
every member of society, rich or poor, high' or 
low. 

I beg you now, 

(III.) To note, as a further aggravation of the 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 89 

offence, the vile dishonesty, hypocrisy, and 
cant with which it is endeavored to apologize 
for the offence. This unlawful speculation of a 
greedy steamboat company is, forsooth, a phil- 
anthropic undertaking. It is devised by the 
friends of the workingman — the poor work- 
ingman — the dear workingman. The poor, 
dear workingman is persecuted by a lot of 
straight-laced Puritans, of stern, hard, cold- 
hearted religionists, of overbearing, domineer- 
ing parsons and deacons, who are resolved that 
the poor, dear workingman shall have no chance 
to enjoy himself on his one only holiday. But 
poor workingmen, dear workingmen, don't you 
be afraid. The steamboat company will stand 
by you. The steamboat company is the poor 
man's friend. We will protect you in your 
right to your holiday, — your only holiday. 
Come right aboard, and don't be afraid. And 
mind you have your — a — your — well, so to 
speak, your chct7ige ready at the captain's office. 
The fare is extremely cheap, for it is quite a 
philanthropic enterprise. 

Shame on this pack of snivelling lies ! How 
came the American workingman to have this 



90 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

one holiday in every week ? Answer me that ! 
Who gave to the American, the Connecticut 
workingman, this peculiar privilege, this royal 
inheritance, and guaranteed it by all the author- 
ity of the commonwealth, — the priceless pos- 
session of an inviolable Sabbath rest, his own, 
his glory, that sets him without a peer among 
the workingmen of almost all the world beside, 
and makes him at once their admiration and 
their envy ? How did he come by it ? To 
whom does he owe it ? Well, strangely enough, 
it appears on inquiry that he owes it to that 
implacable enemy, the straight-laced Puritan ! 
And what is his sole defence and guaranty of 
the inviolability of this sacred right against the 
irrestrainable rapacity of competing business 
interests ? Nothing in the world but these 
despised, antiquated, derided, and scoffed-at 
statutes, — these "blue laws," which you talk 
so merrily of throwing overboard as obsolete 
and preposterous, and incapable of being en- 
forced. And who is it that is threatening to 
break down the safeguards of the one secure 
and quiet refuge for exhausted toil, to tear 
away the walls of legal enactment that guard 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 91 

the Sabbath rest ? Oh, this is the strangest 
thing of all ! for, come to look him in the face, 
he turns out to be none other than the poor 
workingman's, the dear workingman's, the poor, 
dear workingman's, affectionate friend, — the 
liberal and philanthropic steamboat company. 
Workingmen of Norwich, don't be fooled ! 
Think twice over it, and look at the bargain on 
both sides, before you make up your minds to 
trade off your birthright for this miserable 
mess of pottage that the benevolent steamboat 
company are stirring up for you. But if you 
find these corporation blandishments too allur- 
ing, and the savor of their somewhat strong- 
scented excursions too charming to be resisted, 
then remember, by and by, the warning I give 
you beforehand, that the time is not far off 
when you will find the little finger of an unre- 
stricted corporation to be heavier than the loins 
of a Puritan statute. It seems to you very fine 
when Mr. Paul Greene snaps his fingers in the 
face of the prosecuting officer, and steams 
down the river, blowing his impudent steam- 
boat whistle in the ears of Christian congrega- 
tions assembled for the worship of Almighty 



92 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

God, and asks derisively the famous question of 
that other poor man's friend, Mr. William 
Tweed, " What are you going to do about it ? " 
This is very fine indeed, and shows a noble 
independence of the laws of the State. But I 
would just advise you to think ahead a little, 
and fancy how it is going to sound to you, 
three or four years hence, when the benevolent 
Mr. Paul Greene's factory whistle (if he has 
one) wakes you up before daylight on a Sunday 
morning, with a hint that you are wanted in the 
mill, and that, if you have any objections or 
scruples about working on Sunday, he can find 
somebody else in your place ; and " what are 
you going to do about it ? " And hadn't you 
better be getting your answer ready in ad- 
vance ? What are you going to do about it ? 
You will begin to talk about the law and your 
rights. And the workingman's friend will tell 
you, " The law ! that ridiculous old blue law is 
played out long ago. Don't you remember the 
jolly Sunday excursions we used to have on 
'The Ella,' all for the benefit of the poor work- 
ingman ? " And what will you say then ? You 
will not say much, I suspect ; but you will 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 93 

begin to wish in your heart that when Mr. 
Paul Greene invited you to join him in break- 
ing down the old Sunday law, you had taken 
the precaution to ask him what sort of Sunday 
law he was going to give you in the place 
of it. 

I have detained this vast throng of people a 
long time already, but it is absolutely neces- 
sary that I should say a few words in answer 
to the one solitary objection of the slightest 
weight that I have heard alleged against the 
enforcement of this law against the Sunday 
pleasure-excursions of the steamer " Ella." The 
objection is this : that the law is so worded as 
to be capable of vexatious, annoying, malicious 
applications ; to which it is sometimes added 
by those who think they know, that these 
annoying and malicious applications will cer- 
tainly be made, vindictively, on the part of the 
steamboat company in case it is interfered with. 

Undoubtedly the objection is not without 
ground. Our statutes date from a period before 
the existence among us of large towns with 
their peculiar requirements, and of modern 
conveniences of transportation, that have grown 



94 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

almost or quite into necessities. The law, if 
rigorously enforced, might require some trans- 
portation companies to revise their time-tables 
(which does not strike me as an evil), and 
might perhaps (though this is doubtful) inter- 
fere to an injurious extent with the street-car 
and omnibus service. Some such inconven- 
iences as this would have to be endured until 
the law should be amended. I have no doubt 
that society would be able to bear up under the 
burden for a few months. 

The answer to this objection is already given, 
and it is an overwhelming one. Over against 
the petty inconveniences that may result from 
enforcing the law, I set the enormous, the 
almost infinite loss that inevitably will result 
to society if the law is successfully defied ; and 
there I leave that matter. 

It is the remark of no religious zealot, but 
of one of the coolest and shrewdest students of 
practical politics, the late Horace Greeley, in 
one of his letters from Europe, that we in 
America are shut up to the choice between the 
Puritan Sabbath and the Parisian Sabbath. 
This issue is now before you, citizens ; and in a 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 95 

few more weeks, whatever you may do or not 
do, the decision will have been made. 

Before the matter is irrevocably settled by 
your action or your inaction, I could wish you 
might stand with me an hour on Sunday morn- 
ing in the "labor-market" at Geneva, and see 
the troops of dull, tired, sodden-looking labor- 
ers, in their ragged blouses, unwashed from the 
grime and sweat of one week's work, trudging 
off sluggishly and wearily, "like dumb, driven 
cattle," to the work of the next week. Are 
these slaves ? you ask. Slaves ! Bless you, no, 
my dear man ! These are freemen. These are 
voters and citizens in a land of universal suf- 
frage, under the freest government on earth, 
with an advanced and liberal constitution of 
the latest French invention and with all the 
modern improvements. No "blue laws" here : 
they had blue laws once in Geneva (though they 
never did in Connecticut), but they have laughed 
them down long ago. This, which you see, is lib- 
erty, — complete, untrammelled liberty. Every 
one of these free citizens has a right — a proud, 
inviolable right — to work on Sunday if he 
chooses. And this is what it ends in for him ; 



96 Sunday Observance and Sunday Laws. 

and this is where it will end for you, if you 
choose to make the costly experiment. The 
workingman who may work on Sunday, when 
work is wanted has got to work on Sunday. 
For the liberty of rest for each one 
depends on a law of rest for all. 

Think of it ! Think of it twice ! Think of 
it again ! and then say whether you will barter 
away your birthright, the American Sunday, 
the universal privilege of rich and poor, for 
this miserable French delusion, a Parisian holi- 
day, through which one half the people are 
condemned to toil, that the other half may 
frolic. 

I have done. I stand before you here a soli- 
tary citizen, with not one influential friend at 
my back, to state this case to you, as I have 
already stated it to the prosecuting officer and 
to the executive officers of the city. The pros- 
ecuting officer will do his duty : he has no 
option in the case. 1 The mayor will do his 
duty, I have not the slightest doubt, accord- 
ing to his conscientious understanding of it. 

1 This turned out to be a mistake. When it came to the scratch, 
the attorney flinched. 



Enforcement of Sunday Laws. 97 

Whether you will do your duty or not I do not 
know. I have delivered my soul. On every 
hand, as I walk the streets, I hear nothing but 
presages of defeat, with expressions sometimes 
of exultation, sometimes of sympathy. Exult, 
I beg you, to your hearts' content, but save 
your sympathies till they are wanted. I cannot 
be defeated. You may be defeated. But I 
defy the world and the Devil to defeat me, for 
my work is done. I have dragged these two 
most reluctant parties together, — the Law and 
the Law-breakers, — and compelled them to 
stand face to face in the civil forum and in the 
forum of the public. Henceforth, it is no fight 
of mine, although my rights and liberties as 
well as yours are at stake in it. But I shall 
stand by and watch the progress of it ; and 
shortly I shall know, and the State shall know, 
and the land shall know, what is the character 
of Norwich as a law-abiding, law-sustaining, 
law-enforcing city. 



II. 

SIX SERMONS ON THE SABBATH 
QUESTION. 

By GEORGE BLAGDEN BACON. 



PREFACE. 



THIS book is simply what it pretends to be, a 
series of sermons preached to the author's 
own congregation. He has preferred to print them 
unaltered; adding, however, occasional references 
in the form of foot-notes. And, if the book shall 
seem to be needlessly diffuse or unduly rhetorical 
in its style, it is only just to remember that it was 
designed to be spoken, not to be read. 

It is not probable that there is any thing new 
in the argument herein presented. Indeed, it is 
scarcely possible to say any thing new on a subject 
which has been so long and so thoroughly discussed. 
But the argument for the observance of the Lord's 
Day, as these sermons present it, is not the one to 
which the American churches are in the habit of 
listening; and it therefore had the merit of fresh- 
ness to most of those who heard it. Moreover, the 
discussion seemed to be timely, in view of recent 
agitations of "the Sunday question" in New York 
and New Jersey; and some persons found it useful 



102 Preface. 

in the relief of perplexities by which their minds 
had been troubled. Others, hesitating fully to ac- 
cept the argument, desired the opportunity to exam- 
ine it more carefully. The volume is, therefore, 
printed especially for the use of those to whom the 
sermons were first preached. 

But it is believed that the wider publication of 
it may be useful. For there are many Christian peo- 
ple, who, while greatly approving and even adopting 
what has been called the " Anglo -American " practice 
with regard to the Lord's Day, have never been 
satisfied with the theory which influential writers in 
England and America have supposed to be essential 
to that practice. And it is not pleasant for those 
who are thus honestly obliged to differ from their 
brethren, to find themselves put, even by implica- 
tion, outside of the number of " evangelical Chris- 
tians," and to be told that the opinions which they 
hold are " defective, erroneous, and worthless," or 
" productive of extreme mischief," x or the like. 
Against such "judgment of the brethren," to which 
there seems to be a constant tendency, not only on 
the part of individuals, but even on the part of cor- 
porations, this volume may serve as a timely protest. 

1 See Gilfillan's The Sabbath. American Tract Society's edition, 
PP- 576, 577. 



Preface. 103 

For though that protest has been often made, and 
with the sanction of most venerable and authoritative 
names, it needs to be repeated constantly. And 
just now it will be a useful encouragement to some 
perplexed consciences to be reminded, that, if they 
must hold such views as those herein set forth, they 
can hold them without sin. 

For this- reason, among others, and because it is 
believed that these views are really, as they were 
honestly designed to be, in the interest of the better 
observance of the Lord's Day, they receive a publi- 
cation which was not at first intended for them. 



THE SABBATH QUESTION. 



I. 

THE SABBATH OF GOD. 

" &rjus tfje fjeabens ano tije eartfj foere ftmsrjeo, ano all tfje 
fjost of tfjem. $tno on tfje sebentfj oag (Hxoo enoeo fjts fcoorfe 
bjJjtcfj Ije fjao maoe ; ano fje resteo ott tfje sebentfj oag from all 
fjts ftrorn fofjtcrj fje fjao maoe. <Eno (£00 fclesseo tfje seberttfj 
oag, ano sanctttteo ft : because tijat in it fje fjati resteo from all 
fjts toorft fofjtcfj ffioo created ano maoe." — Gen. ii. 1-3. 

IT is impossible to turn these earliest pages 
of the Hebrew Scriptures without peculiar 
interest, in which there is mingled something 
of irrepressible reverence. If for no other rea- 
son than their extreme antiquity, then for that, 
they are sufficiently venerable. But they chal- 
lenge our reverence not for that only ; the 
themes with which they are occupied are of 
such sublime importance, and the statements 
which they make are uttered with such sim- 
plicity, such dignity, such poetic beauty, such 

105 



106 The Sabbath Qtcestion. 

philosophic wisdom, that we cannot read them 
without increasing wonder and deepening ven- 
eration. Puzzled we may often be, in our en- 
deavors to interpret them ; perplexed by the 
apparent contradictions which we find in them, 
when we compare them with the records dis- 
covered by the researches of science ; forced to 
reject old explanations, and to take up with new 
hypotheses concerning them ; but we cannot 
treat them with contempt or with indifference. 
We may discover that they are not what we at 
first thought they were, — that they are not, in 
all cases, to be taken literally, — that in matters 
strictly scientific they are probably not authori- 
tative ; but if we should, therefore, infer that 
the world has outgrown these first chapters of 
the Book of Genesis, and can afford to disre- 
gard them, we should make a very serious 
mistake indeed. 

For if these pages do not teach us geology, 
as we used to think they did, they teach us 
something better and more valuable than geol- 
ogy. If they do not teach us chronology, they 
teach us truth of more eternal interest than 
chronology. They assert some things concern- 



The Sabbath of God. 107 

ing God, and some things concerning man, 
which it is of the profoundest importance that 
we should know and ponder, — things which are 
fundamental to all true religious thought and 
to all high religious activity. The revelation 
of a personal God, and of man as made in the 
image of God, — if these first pages of Genesis 
declared no other truths than these, still they 
would be of most incalculable value. One God, 
from whom are all things ; one man, made in 
the image of God, — these are the two prime 
facts which lie at the foundation of the world's 
history. God and man, — these are the two 
great actors in that history. The relation of 
God to man, the relation of likeness, — though 
at an infinite distance, yet real likeness not- 
withstanding, — this is what makes possible a 
science of theology. The relation of man to 
God, a relation which makes possible some 
reciprocity of affection, this, I might almost 
say, is the very definition of religion. Such 
considerations as these will show us why it is 
that these first pages of the Bible are not to 
be discarded as if obsolete and worthless. 

There seems to be another truth, of pro- 



108 The Sabbath Question. 

found interest and value, — a truth somehow 
grounded upon this relation between God and 
man, — hinted at in the verses which I have 
chosen for our text. It will not be easy, 
perhaps, to draw it forth, and state it in such 
a way as shall convey no false impression. 
The work of explaining these first chapters 
of Genesis is not at all easy. We read of God 
as working six days, to create the heavens 
and the earth, and resting on the seventh. 
And we find some parallel drawn between 
God and man, as working and as resting. 
And all sorts of questions occur to us, — ques- 
tions which it is much easier to ask than to 
answer. What are these six days in which God 
wrought these works ? What is this seventh 
day in which he rested from them ? What is 
his work ? What is his rest ? Is he, then, ever 
tired ? Or is he ever idle ? And what analogy 
can there be between such words as " work " 
and " rest " applied to God, and the same 
words applied to man ? 

And yet analogy of some sort seems to be 
hinted. Here is this mysterious assertion that 
our human nature is somehow in the image of 



The Sabbath of God. 109 

God ; and here is the observance of rest, on our 
part, grounded on the fact that God himself 
rested, and sanctified and blessed the day on 
which he rested. Surely there is something to 
be learned concerning our own duty, concern- 
ing our own privilege, concerning that "rest" 
spoken of in the Epistle to the Hebrews l (or, 
as it stands in the original, 2 that "keeping of 
Sabbath "), which " remaineth for the people of 
God," if we can learn what God's own Sabbath, 
of which this text speaks, signified, and wherein 
it consisted. 

Let us rather say "consists" and "signifies," 

— using the present tense, and not the past. 
For I believe, and I shall try to show, that 
God's Sabbath still continues. Need we insist, 

— nay, even can we suppose, that the seventh 
day, which God blessed and sanctified, was 
really a day of twenty-four hours' duration, 
according to the measure of a man's compre- 
hension ? If the six days which preceded it 
were, as used to be supposed, six literal days of 
twenty-four hours each, then this also should 
be such. But if, as* science tells us, and as 

1 Chaps, ii. and iv. 2 Chap. iv. 17. 



no The Sabbath Questio7i. 

Christian scholars all agree, it was not through 
six brief days, but through six mighty epochs 
of innumerable years, that this work of cre- 
ation was perfected ; if, through ages upon 
ages, and with catastrophe after catastrophe, 
and by mighty agencies of fire and frost and 
flood, God wrought the finished order of his 
perfect universe, until at last it was made ready 
for the man created in his image, — if this is 
true, then we should fitly and naturally expect 
the seventh day to be a long, vast epoch like 
the others. 

Concerning the six ages of creation, there is 
not any longer room for doubt. There was a 
time — not so very long ago — when good men 
imagined, that, unless they contended for the 
literal exactness of this narrative in Genesis, 
they were surrendering the very fortress of re- 
vealed religion, and undermining the very foun- 
dation of the truth. And so they did contend 
for literal days, and literal mornings and literal 
evenings to each one, and each one twenty- 
four, literal hours in length, no more, no less ; 
contended vehemently as for essential truth ; 
contended in the face of science ; contended in 



The Sabbath of God, 1 1 1 

contempt of all the testimony which God had 
written in the book of nature ; contended even 
in conflict with the coherent story of the Book 
of Genesis itself. But this is no longer thought 
necessary ; nor is it any longer deemed heresy, 
if we interpret the scriptural record by the 
commentary of the records in the rocks. And 
the result of this interpretation is, that distinct 
and successive periods in the process of crea- 
tion, occurring in the general order indicated 
in scripture, are indeed discovered in geologi- 
cal history ; but, instead of being periods of 
twenty-four hours, they must have been pe- 
riods of prolonged and almost incalculable 
duration. Each one was preceded by a night 
of darkness, convulsion, catastrophe ; J and, when 

1 The most recent statement of scholarly interpretation on this 
point may be found in Lange's Commentary on Genesis, issued' in 
the American edition since this sermon was preached. It is quoted 
because it is the most recent, and because it gives with sufficient 
completeness the theory of the creative " evenings." 

" We are not to conceive of the evening and morning of the single 
creative days as merely symbolic intervals of the day of God. Ac- 
cording to the analogy of the first day, the evening is the time of a 
peculiar chaotic fermentation of things ; while the morning is the time 
of that new, fair, solemn world-building that corresponds to it. With 
each evening there is also indicated a new birth-travail of things, a 



H2 The Sabbath Question. 

one night ended, a new order of creation was 
produced, — and then another night of fire or 
cataclysm came, and then another day ; and so 
on from stage to stage, until at last, into the 
world which had been fitted up, by these suc- 
cessive acts, for human habitation and dis- 
cipline, the man, made in the image of God, 
was introduced. And the evening of convul- 
sion and darkness, and the morning of new cre- 
ative forms and phases, made up each one of 
these immense primeval days. Only, whereas 
of the first and second, and of all the six, there 
is recorded a beginning and an end, there is 
no end recorded of the seventh. What if it be 
not ended yet ? What if the Sabbath which 
began when the creative work was finished, 
has continued and is still continuing, and shall 
still continue while the created universe en- 
new earth revolution, which elevates the old formation that went 
before it, — a seeming darkening, a seeming sunset, or going down 
of the world. . . . With each morning, on the contrary, there is a 
new, a higher, a fairer, and a richer state of the world. In this way 
do the evening and morning in the creative periods have the highest 
significance for an agreement of the sacred geology with the results 
of the scientific geology." — Lange, Genesis, American edition, 
p. 167. 



The Sabbath of God, 113 

dures ! Each one of those creation days was 
ages long : is the Sabbath day any shorter ? 
Has it ever been broken in upon by any new 
creative act ? Is not this age of human his- 
tory, of human discipline, of human sanctifica- 
tion, God's Sabbath age ? Is it not this which 
he has blessed and sanctified ? 

I know that it is not wise nor safe to specu- 
late concerning questions about which we know 
so little, — but this inquiry is not one of simply 
speculative interest. There is a parallel drawn 
in scripture between God's Sabbath and man's 
Sabbath, between God's rest and man's rest. 
Indeed, the one is made the ground of the other. 
And they are the same in kind. Sabbath is 
rest. When we know wherein the rest of God 
consists, we may know wherein our rest is to 
consist. When we discover what God's Sab- 
bath is, we may discover what our own Sabbath 
is, or what it ought to be. And I insist, there- 
fore, that the study which we are pursuing this 
morning is not fanciful or unreasonable. 

Assuming, then, for the sake of argument, 
what it is the duty of those who doubt it to 
disprove, that the seventh day which God has 



ii4 The Sabbath Question. 

blessed and sanctified is even now continuing, 
let us reverently ask how he is spending it. I 
speak as if it were a mere assumption for the 
sake of argument ; although, if so, it is an as- 
sumption which the writer of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews also makes, when he speaks of the 
rest into which God has entered as if still con- 
tinuing, and as being the very same into which 
a promise is left us of entering also. So that 
the case stands thus : God began to rest ; God 
never has ceased to rest ; God even speaks of 
his own rest as a continuous and permanent 
state, in which men may share. " My rest ; my 
rest ! " The words are solemnly quoted over 
and over again by the writer of that Epistle, as 
full of most profound and awful meaning. The 
rest of God, the Sabbath of God; not many 
rests, but one rest ; not many Sabbaths, but 
one Sabbath ; not a rest which comes and goes, 
but a rest which remains, — perpetual, eternal, 
— this is the true Sabbath/ It is God's Sab- 
bath, and it is our Sabbath also if we do not 
refuse it. What is it, then ? How does God 
spend it ? Wherein does it consist ? 

Not, at any rate, in idleness or inactivity. 



The Sabbath of God. 1 1 5 

We have Christ's own word for that. There 
has been such a conception of God as that, 
having made the world and started it in motion, 
he lets it spin forever, unheeded and unsus- 
tained except by some inherent energy of its 
own ; but this is not the Christian conception 
of God. To loll upon Olympus, to look down 
in idle unconcern upon the changing scenes of 
earth, to exist in selfish sloth from age to age, 
— this was a heathen view of God, and a most 
gross and false conception of divine blessed- 
ness. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, the one God, the true God, the living 
God, is no such being as that. "My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work," said our Lord 
in that sublime discourse of his concerning the 
Sabbath. 1 " You accuse me," says he to the 
Jews, " you accuse me of working on the Sab- 
bath day ; so I do ; so does my Father : work 
is not a violation of the Sabbath; idleness is 
not an observance of it : my Father is at rest, 
but he is not idle. My Father worketh hith- 
erto, and I work." 

These are divine words. They are too won- 

1 John v. 17. 



n6 The Sabbath Question. 

derful for human philosophies ; they are high, 
we could not attain unto them with our unaided 
imaginations. Perfectly to grasp the paradox 
of a God forever busy, yet at rest forever, — of 
a God in infinite repose, and yet in infinite activ- 
ity, —only he who spake as never man spake 
was able. And yet the paradox is true : we 
feel the truth of it, and do homage to it, even 
if we cannot explain it. For if God were in- 
deed idle (as a German writer has beautifully 
said), no sun would shine, no flowers would 
bloom, all creation would languish, all the uni- 
verse would dissolve. He is at rest, and yet 
he makes the outgoing of every morning and 
every evening to rejoice; every singing-bird 
pipes because he gladdens it ; every sparrow 
flies because he bears it up ; every lily grows 
because he nurtures it ; every hair of every 
humblest head is numbered by his knowledge. 
He is at rest, and yet the work of his preserv- 
ing care continues. He creates no longer ; but 
he sustains, preserves, perpetuates his work. 

But much more than this. God enters now 
upon a higher work ; not a work of force, but a 
work of love. He has to save the man whom 



The Sabbath of God. 1 1 7 

he has made. He has to save and sanctify 
him ; and through the long ages of his Sabbath 
he has patiently been working out, and still is 
patiently working out, the spiritual perfectness 
of man. Herein, indeed, we find his Sabbath 
work. In six days he made the heavens and 
the earth, and all the host of them, and fitted 
up man's dwelling-place, and put man in it. 
On the seventh he is making all things over, 
making all things new. On the sixth day he 
made man, on the seventh he is making him a 
new creature ; on the sixth day he made man 
good, on the seventh he is making him holy ; 
on the sixth day that which is natural, on the 
seventh day that which is spiritual. 

And so the rest of God is seen to be the 
rising from a lower to a higher work, a ceasing 
from the work of making to the nobler employ- 
ment of saving, a passing from his miracles of 
power to his sublimer miracles of grace ! God 
made the seventh day holy, — blessed it and 
sanctified it. When the scripture says he 
sanctified it, it does not merely mean that he 
called it holy, but that he made it holy. Hith- 
erto in God's creation there had been no chance 



1 1 8 The Sabbath Question. 

for holiness. Matter cannot be holy : God 
could see the material world, that it was good ; 
but he could not see that it was holy : there is 
no moral quality at all in it. He saw the light, 
that it was good, — but not that it was holy ; so 
the firmament was good, and the earth, and 
the waters, and the vegetable world, and the 
changeful orbs of heaven, and the creeping 
things of water, and flying fowls of air, and 
mighty beasts of earth, — all these were good ; 
and man himself, as first of all the animal 
world, as sum and chief of these created things, 
was good, but even he, as yet, not holy. The 
innocence in which man was made was a differ- 
ent thing from holiness. Holiness cannot be 
created. It is not the result of force. It is 
the work of liberty. Power can create. But 
only love can sanctify. The earth and the 
heavens and all the host of them could be 
spoken into being by the sovereign will of God, 
and fashioned through the silent ages by his 
hands. And man, the summit of creation, 
could be formed, a living soul, with powers like 
God's own powers, with liberty like God's. 
But now, if the problem is to make the man 



The Sabbath of God. 1 1 9 

employ his liberty for good and not for evil, use 
his powers for right and not for wrong, if, in a 
word, the work is to make this free man a holy 
man, — this is a work, not for creative force, 
but for renewing love ; not for might like that 
which heaved the heavens above the spacious 
earth ; not for power like that which fixed the 
bounds of earth and seas, but for the still, 
strong Spirit of the living, loving God. 

Through six mighty ages, then, in slow suc- 
cession, was creation perfected ; and it was very 
good. At the head of it, made lord over it, 
with dominion over all the works of the Crea- 
tor's hands, stood man, formed in God's image, 
— free with the dangerous liberty to choose 
right or to choose wrong, — free in the bal- 
anced equipoise of his imperial will. What the 
Creator's hand can do for him is done. He is 
made free to act, able to act. If he is forced 
to act either in one way or in the other, com- 
pelled to choose either for right or for wrong, 
his freedom is destroyed, and his holiness is 
impossible. Holiness upon compulsion is not 
holiness. Virtue produced by force is not vir- 
tue at all. Right action which is the result of 



120 The Sabbath Question. 

power has not the blessedness which God 
designs for man. There is no longer room for 
the creative hand upon man. God has made 
him, but now himself must act. The six days' 
work in his behalf is finished. The seventh is 
begun. In the work of creation God has noth- 
ing more to do : scripture and science are at 
one on this point. This seventh age of human 
history is consecrated to a nobler work : God 
has blessed it and sanctified it. He has de- 
voted it to making holy the man whom he made 
free. 

This is the way in which God spends his 
Sabbath. He creates no longer. But he sanc- 
tifies and saves. And so it is not a mere fancy 
if we discover how, as the six days that pre- 
ceded it began, each one with evening, even with 
the darkness of convulsion and catastrophe and 
almost of chaos come again, — so this seventh 
day began with evening, even with the night of 
sin. The man made free to act, chose to act 
wrong. The image of his Maker was defaced 
and marred. The whole creation shared the 
shock and damage of that evil choice. Dark- 
ness came upon the earth, — the darkness of a 



The Sabbath of God. 121 

dreadful ruin, — and gross darkness on the peo- 
ple, even the moral darkness of a deadly sin. 
The whole creation groaned and travailed in 
the pain and bondage which that bad choice 
wrought. The night of sin began this Sabbath 
day. 

But presently the day-star rose, the day-star 
from on high that visited us, — the bright and 
morning star, the Sun of righteousness. The 
dawn began in Eden with the promise to the 
man who sinned. It brightened till the Sun 
arose at Bethlehem. It shineth more and more 
unto the perfect day. It is the light of the 
glory of God shining in Jesus Christ, our Lord. 
The work of this, the last, the Sabbath day, is 
to bless and make holy what the six days had 
created. And the evening and the morning 
are the seventh day. 

But no night shall follow this. This sun 
which has arisen never shall go down. The 
gates of this eternal Sabbath shall not be shut 
at all by day, for there shall be no night there. 
And the rest whereinto God has entered, and 
whence his influence of love goes forth to sanc- 
tify and save the world, — the rest whereinto 



122 The Sabbath Question. 

Christ has entered, and whence his loving 
presence issues with perpetual power to com- 
fort and to help, — the rest into which we are 
entering by his grace and through his Spirit, — 
this rest remaineth, though the earth and 
heaven should pass away. This is the Sabbath. 
And of this all other days are shadowy and 
imperfect types. They vanish. This endures. 

So we find in the Apocalypse the supplement 
of Genesis. And if any man has ever won- 
dered why no more is said in the scriptures 
concerning the seventh day, I tell him that 
the whole Bible is the history of the seventh 
day. To it the six days were preliminary. 
Beside the splendor of its saving grace, the 
skill and power of those creative eras dwindle. 
When God ceased from forming worlds, and 
fashioning their myriad inhabitants, it was to 
sanctify and bless. His highest rest is holi- 
ness ; and holiness with him is not an idle 
and inactive being good, but a perpetual and 
busy and self-sacrificing doing good as well. 

And, if we are to enter into his rest, it must 
be by entering into his beneficence, and by 
abiding in his holiness. Does it seem to us, 



The Sabbath of God. 123 

as well it may, that of all words in human 
speech there is no sweeter word than this 
word, rest ? Well, there is left to us a prom- 
ise of entering into rest. Does it seem to us 
that all our human rest is transient, — for a 
season only, — ends presently in new and 
harder labors, — in renewed fatigue ? Well, 
then, there is left to us a promise of entering 
into God's rest. He is never weary. He is 
never idle. We, too, shall be never weary. 
We, too, shall be never idle. We shall rest 
from sin. We shall rest in holiness. We 
shall rest in God. There, and only there, the 
wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are 
at rest. 

Let us therefore fear, brethren, lest, a prom- 
ise being left us of entering into his rest, any 
of us should seem to come short of it. 



124 The Sabbath Question. 



II. 



THE PURPOSE OF THE JEWISH 
SABBATH. 

" Iteep tfje Saooatfj trag to sanctifg tt, as tfje 2LorB tfjg (SoB 
fjatfj rommanBeB tfjee. 5»tx nags tfjou sfjalt labor, anB Bo ail 
tfjg irrork: 3Sut tfje sebentij Bag is tfje &aooatfj of tfje 3LorB tfjg 
(HSroB : in it tfjou sfjalt not Bo ang foorft, tfjou, nor tfjg son, nor 
tfjg Baugfjter, nor tfjg manscrbant, nor tfjg maiBserbant, nor 
tfjtne ox, nor tfjine ass, nor ang of tfjg rattle, nor tfjg stranger 
tfjat is britfjin tfjg gates ; tfjat tfjg manserbant anB tfjg rnaiB* 
serbant mag rest as bjell as tfjou. %Lntt remember tfjat tfjou 
baast a serbant in tfje lanB of lEggot, anB tfjat tfje 2lorB tfjg (&oB 
brougfjt tfjee out tfjence tfjrougfj amigfjtg fjanB anB 6g a stretcfjeB 
out arm : therefore tfje ILorB tfjg (KoB commanBeB tfjee to feeep 
tfje Saboatfj Bag." — Deut. v. 12-15. 

IN the last sermon, we studied that sublime 
passage in the Book of Genesis which re- 
cords the completion of God's creative work and 
the beginning of his rest. I tried to show that 
the divine rest from creation has continued 
ever since, and still continues ; that the Sab- 
bath of the Lord our God not only cometh, but 
now is. I tried to show also (so far as I might 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 125 

reverently touch upon such mysteries) wherein 
the rest of God consists, and how he is spend- 
ing this long Sabbath day of his ; that rest, to 
him, is not idleness nor inactivity, but rather a 
rising from the exercise of might and power to 
the still, strong exercise of his loving and eter- 
nal Spirit ; and that he is spending his Sabbath 
in the sanctifying of the world, which, through 
six immemorial ages, he had been creating. 
And I reminded you of the gracious promise 
which is left to us, of entering into God's own 
rest ; and tried to show how more than ever 
sweet and beautiful that promise sounds, when 
we discover that it is a rest of holiness, the 
rest of being good and doing good, the rest 
of tireless love. 

This, then, the rest of God, is the true rest : 
this, the Sabbath of God, is the true Sab- 
bath. We use words sometimes in a lower, 
sometimes in a higher, sense : we are obliged 
to use them so, partly because of the poverty 
of human speech, which has not words enough 
for every thing, and so compels some to do 
double duty ; but more because of the relation 
of things seen to things unseen, and the cor- 



126 The Sabbath Question. 

respondence between them. For example, we 
have only one word, "life," by which to desig- 
nate the life of the body and the life of the 
soul : and we are obliged constantly to remind 
ourselves, that, when we use the word in its 
lower signification, we have not exhausted its 
meaning ; that (as a favorite hymn-writer has 
expressed the thought), — 

" ' Tis not the whole of life to live, 
Nor all of death to die ; " 

that the limited, temporal meaning of the word 
is but a shadow of its spiritual meaning. I 
know that the lower meaning is constantly 
absorbing our attention as if it were all. But 
it is not all. The true life, the real death, are 
of the soul, unseen, eternal. 

So with this word "rest." We know what 
it means when we speak of bodily rest, of 
taking rest in sleep, of days of temporal rest. 
We know, that, even in this usage of the word, 
its meaning is very sweet and beautiful ; that 
when we are worn out with weary labor, with 
work of toiling hands and busy feet and ach- 
ing head, the comfort of repose is very great, 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 127 

nay, very necessary ; that without it the unre- 
freshed body must become the- victim of dis- 
ease, the prey of death. We know that even 
every toiling beast must rest, or die. We 
know, by an experience which defines it better 
than all verbal definitions can, what rest is, and 
how comforting, how much to be desired, how 
not to be dispensed with, it is to every living 
creature. 

But there is a higher rest, a nobler rest, a 
truer rest, than what is physical ; just as there 
is a higher life, a nobler life, a truer life, than 
what is physical. As comforting and pleasant 
to the spirit as the repose of evening to the 
body, as much more blessed and complete and 
enduring as eternity is more perfect than time, 
is this true rest. It is that whereof the Lord 
Jesus spoke in words of gracious promise when 
he said, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It 
is that into which God has entered, and in 
which he now abides, his works being finished 
from the foundation of the world. It is that 
into which a promise is left us of entering also. 

But of this rest it is not easy to conceive. 



128 The Sabbath Question. 

Eye hath not seen it. We have seen the body 
locked in the embrace of sleep, and watched 
its peaceful breathing when the labors of the 
day are over. But this spiritual rest is some- 
thing which cannot be seen by mortal eyes. 
For the tired body, too, there are restful sounds 
that soothe the drowsy senses ; there are re- 
freshment and repose in pleasant music ; or 
when we lie where branches sway and rustle 
over us, and the birds sing in them, there is 
rest in the very sounds which our ears hear. 
But this spiritual rest of which I speak, makes 
no such appeal to sense. Ear hath not heard 
it, neither has the imagination conceived it. 
It can only be known by being felt and enjoyed. 
Just as description of light is impossible to one 
born blind, so no definition, no description, no 
representation, of this spiritual rest is adequate 
for an unrestful soul. God must reveal it to 
us by his Spirit, if we are to know what it is. 
He must make us partakers of it. We must 
enter into it. 

And this is what God is all the while invit- 
ing us to do, attracting us, impelling us to do ; 
this is what he yearns to have us do ; it is for 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 129 

this that all his government is exercised, that 
all his providence is arranged, that all his Spirit 
strives. And the way in which he leads us to 
this spiritual rest, as to all spiritual things, is 
through our natural experiences. First, that 
which is natural ; then that which is spiritual. 
The lower first, and afterward the higher. That 
is the law. From things that are seen to things 
that are unseen. That is the order. 

Remembering this, we begin to see the rea- 
son for the commandment which God gave the 
Hebrew people through his servant Moses, and 
which I have taken for a text. Here was a 
rude, self-willed, headstrong people, to be made 
quiet, religious, trustful, holy. This was the 
problem : a people to be trained and educated 
to a religious exaltation which should make 
them fit to be the religious teachers of the 
world ; a race of more or less degraded slaves 
to be familiarized with spiritual truth, and puri- 
fied by it. And this was the way the problem 
was solved : by a system of types and prophe- 
cies and shadows. Earth was made to them 
the hint of heaven. Nature was to lead them 
to the God of nature. Events of time and 



130 The Sabbath Question. 

place were to suggest to them realities beyond 
time and superior to place. Things of sense 
were to be the media of things of spirit. The 
Jewish law cannot be understood, nor the worth 
and significance of it measured, unless this is 
constantly borne in mind. 

For example, it was the design of the in- 
spired leader of the Hebrew people, the great 
lawgiver and soldier who was God's instrument 
in making them a nation, — it was his design, 
or, let us rather say, it was God's design 
through him, to teach this people the great 
truth on which we have been meditating. It 
was no easy task. To make things unseen 
real and vivid ; to lift their minds up to the 
truth of an immortal rest of peaceful holiness, 
when a host of busy cares, of snaring tempta- 
tions, of hurtful passions, of degrading lusts, 
were dragging them downward, — this was a 
very difficult thing indeed. Persistent, patient, 
skilful schooling was necessary, as it is with 
an ignorant and perverse child. To use words 
in a lower sense at first, and gradually to lift 
them to their higher sense ; to make use of 
the " illusiveness of life " (as Robertson beau- 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 1 3 1 

tifully calls it *), and to show what infinite 
stretch there is to truth, — how it draws out like 
an endless telescope ; or how (to use another 
figure) it is a clew which, if you hold one end 
of it, you may follow out eternally, — this was 
the way, the only way, to do the work. 

So the law of association was called in to 
teach the people. And as when men build a 
monument to mark some famous spot, or to 
commemorate some great achievement, or to 
perpetuate the memory of some illustrious life, 
that when the coming generations ask, " What 
is this monument ? " the story of the place, or 
of the deed, or of the life, being associated 
with this material thing, this block of granite 
or of marble that can be touched and seen, 
may live, and not die : so Moses erected for 
this people "a monumental day, that when, in 
the uniform succession of the days, it came 
around, and men should ask, " What is this 
day ? " the higher truth attached to it should 
be permanent and powerful. 

What, then, was this day ? Moses called it 

1 Sermons by the late Rev. F. W. Robertson. Vol. iii. Ser- 



132 The Sabbath Question, 

Sabbath, — which means rest. An J so it was a 
Sabbath ; not the real Sabbath, but a Sabbath, 
in some inferior meaning of the word. Not the 
real Sabbath, I say, for that, as we have seen, 
is constant and above time ; not the perfect 
rest, — for that is uniform, perpetual, spiritual, 
— but, in some limited and lower meaning of 
the word, a rest ; a Sabbath shadowy, imper- 
fect, transient, that should yet, by its very 
imperfectness, suggest a real, enduring, perfect 
one. The idea of rest, the name of rest, was 
fastened on, declared to be sacred, emphasized 
with all the sanctions of religion. That of it- 
self was a great thing. The result must be, 
that, after a while they would discover that no 
twenty-four hours' rest of body, merely, could 
exhaust the meaning of that sacred word, or 
meet the full requirements of that high idea. 

But this was not all. The mysterious fact 
on which we pondered a week ago was linked 
inseparably to this day. It spoke of God's rest. 
The Hebrew people had a most imperfect no- 
tion, probably a gross, and often a wrong, no- 
tion of what God's rest is. But it was a great 
thing that the word could be connected any- 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 133 

how with God. Already the idea of rest be- 
comes immensely dignified and enlarged, by the 
mere fact that it belongs in any sense, however 
feebly understood, to him. And thus enlarged 
and dignified, it must sooner or later lift the 
people who receive it up above the world of 
sense, into the world of spirit. 

But this was not all. This Jewish Sabbath 
had another association connected with it. 
When men asked, " What does this day 
mean?" and "Why was it ordained?" one 
answer would be the one on which we have 
just been meditating, " Because God rested." 
That is the reason given in the Book of Exo- 
dus. That was, probably enough, the religious 
truth which Abraham had handed down along 
the generations to the lawgiver Moses. But 
it is not probable that this fact was commemo- 
rated by what I have called a monumental day, 
until the exodus from Egypt. Probably Abra- 
ham knew that God had created, and that God 
had rested. But probably Abraham did not 
celebrate God's rest by a weekly Sabbath. 
There is only a very slender and unsatisfac- 
tory sum of evidence, only the very thinnest 



134 The Sabbath Question. 

film of proof, to show that any weekly Sabbath 
was observed before the time of Moses. 1 But 
when, after the long- years of slavery in Egypt, 
this oppressed and tired race of bondmen were 
emancipated ; when the centuries of degrading 
toil were ended, and the tribes went forth, to 
look no more upon the hateful brick-yards 
where they and their fathers before them had 
worn out weary lives, and to hear no more 
the harsh voices of their cruel taskmasters ; 
when, with new-formed hopes stirring within 
them, and the dawning consciousness of na- 
tionality dignifying them, they were marching 
toward a land which they might hope to call 
their own, a goodly land, a land of hills and 
valleys, a land of milk and honey, — then there 
was ordained this Sabbath day, which should 
always speak to them and to the generations 

1 Probably the best summary of the argument on this point is to 
be found in Hessey's Bampton Lectures (i860), to which volume, and 
to the authorities copiously quoted therein, it is sufficient to refer 
any readers who may desire to inform themselves concerning it. 
Quotations are given in still greater detail (especially from theologians 
since the Reformation) in Cox's Literature on the Sabbath Question, 
— a book of marvellous learning and research. But the narration 
in this sixteenth chapter of Exodus speaks for itself so clearly that 
it scarcely needs much comment. 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 135 

after them, of slavery and rest from slavery, of 
toil and rest from toil, of degradation and de- 
liverance from degradation, of sorrow changed 
to joy, of trouble ending in exceeding blessed- 
ness. 

Thus it was, and then it was, that this seventh- 
day Sabbath was instituted. It was in the 
wilderness. I read the story of it in the chap- 
ter from the Book of Exodus this morning 
(chap. xvi.). The people had come out of 
Egypt exultant and rejoicing that their toil was 
over ; there was no more work for them thence- 
forth, they thought ; they were free at last from 
the weary servitude of centuries. It is easy to 
conceive the gratulation which inspired them as 
they thought of this ; it is easy to conceive 
what present meaning this word " rest " would 
have for them, and how it would seem of all 
words the sweetest. But they had not been 
long started on their journey before they found 
that they were very far from being yet at rest. 
As soon as they were fairly in the wilderness, 
and the enthusiasm of their deliverance was 
over, and the hardships of the journey through 
the desert began to make themsel^^ l ^'' 



136 The Sabbath Question. 

began to grumble and despond, and to say that 
this was worse than Egypt, and to wish that 
they were back again. They had not found 
the rest they thought they had. Want and 
hunger and toilsome journeying had come upon 
them instead. And they murmured against 
their leaders. 

Something had to be done now, to meet the 
exigency, and to teach this fickle, ignorant, 
childish people patience and faith. So God 
sent the quails and the manna, and they were 
fed; but with this provision of necessary food 
came also, by inspired wisdom, the ordinance 
of the Sabbath day. When the sixth day came, 
they were to gather food for two days, and to 
rest upon the seventh. On the seventh day, if 
they went out to look for manna, as some dis- 
orderly persons did, they could not find it, 
because there was none to find. This seventh 
day was to speak to them of rest, was to be a 
constant prophecy of rest, to cheer their dis- 
contented spirits, to encourage their distrustful 
hearts. It was to say to them, so often as it 
came, "The promise which was given to you of 
entering into rest shall not be unfulfilled. A 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 137 

rest remains for you. You have come out of 
Egypt forever ; and though you are in the 
wilderness still, and have hardships and dis- 
comforts and fatigues to endure, plenty of them, 
do not be discouraged : there is verily a rest in 
store, surely a rest remains. Take heart, and 
trust in God for it." This was what the sev- 
enth day declared to them so often as it came. 

Naturally enough, they at first supposed this 
promise was to be fulfilled as soon as they 
should get out of the wilderness. They used 
to say to themselves, probably, while they 
were wandering through those perilous deserts, 
"This is hard, but let us wait until we enter 
Canaan : it will all be over then. Then we 
shall be at rest. That is a goodly land, beauti- 
ful, well watered, rich and bountiful, and, more 
than all, our own. Wait till we get there. It 
will all be over then. And then we shall be at 
rest." 

So, after forty years of toilsome wandering, 
and after one whole generation of the people 
had been worn out in the desert, the long- 
looked-for day arrived. They crossed the bound- 
ary river, and they entered into the goodly 



138 The Sabbath Question. 

land. It was indeed a goodly land, but it was 
not a land of rest to them. Beset by foes on 
every hand, compelled to fight for standing- 
ground with enemies not few nor feeble, they 
had but a stormy and unrestful time of it. And 
presently the truth began to dawn on them, that 
Joshua, their new leader, had not given them 
rest any more than Moses had ; that the rest, 
the true rest, the rest which their souls needed, 
was not to be had even here, was not, at least, 
to be had yet. But all the time this seventh 
day kept coming, with its significant name, 
with its clustering associations, with its myste- 
rious reference to the rest of God, with its 
historic connection with their deliverance from 
bondage. Surely this must mean something. 
They had not found its meaning yet, but they 
could not help believing that it had a meaning. 
So the Sabbath day remained a constant and 
illusive prophecy. 

And so the years rolled by, and still con- 
tinual wars harassed them ; and if for a little 
time there came a season of prosperity, it was 
broken up again by some calamity : just as, 
though the Sabbath came at intervals of seven 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 139 

days, to bring repose to tired bodies and to toil- 
ing hands, to master and to servant and to 
cattle, yet it was soon over, and the weary 
round of work-day labor, and of fighting, and of 
troubles, would begin again. Until in David's 
time (or a little later), the "rest" was seen to 
be still future, and more remote and vague than 
ever ; and they had ceased to look for it so 
confidently as temporal and earthly. Still the 
seventh day returned and kept returning ; but, 
to the more thoughtful and spiritually minded 
of the people, it was now prophetic of things 
higher, things unseen, things scarcely to be 
defined in speech. That sublime call to wor- 
ship in the ninety-fifth Psalm indicates this 
growth and discipline of the people, and their 
exaltation to a higher stand-point. " Let us 
worship and fall down," the Psalmist says, "let 
us bow before the Lord our Maker." He 
created us. He is leading us. He has rest in 
store for us. What it is we know not. Many 
have failed of it. But it still remains. I think 
the very structure of this Psalm is full of elo- 
quent suggestion. It begins with a burst of 
worshipful acclamation ; but it sinks to silent 



140 The Sabbath Question. 

reverence and awe, and closes in a hush of 
mingled fear and hope on that word "rest," — 
as if the meaning of it could not perfectly be 
uttered. 

So this thought of rest kept growing strong- 
er, even although it was growing higher and 
seemingly more distant. It was a thought 
which never lost its hold upon the people. It 
was the central thought of their religious sys- 
tem. Six days they might forget it, but on the 
seventh they remembered it. The idea was so 
wedged into their religious observances that it 
could not possibly be taken out without the 
dislocation of them all. The weekly Sabbath 
was not the only Sabbath. There was a Sab- 
bath of weeks as well as of days ; and a Sabbath 
of months ; and a great, memorable, wonderful 
Sabbath of years, — of rest for a whole year, 
every fiftieth year. 1 The Sabbath of days 
pointed to the Sabbath of weeks, and this 
again to the Sabbath of months, and this again 
to the Sabbath of years, and this — to what? 
Could it be that the mind of the Hebrew peo- 

1 Exod. xxiii. 10-13: cf. especially Lev. xxiii. 3, 15, 24, 33-39; 
xxv. 1-24 ; xx vi. 2 ; Deut. xv. 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 141 

pie, led on and up, thus far, would stop here? 
Would it not almost of necessity rise higher 
yet, — even from earth to heaven? Or let me. 
put the case a little differently. The seventh 
day in its weekly return reminded them of rest 
from slavery, of rescue from Egypt, of repose 
in Canaan. But this, — had this no higher 
meaning ? was this all ? Was there not a bet- 
ter Canaan, a happier land, a repose more per- 
fect, where no foes could enter, where no evils 
could annoy, where no sorrows could trouble, 
where no death could kill ? And then would 
come the thought — there must be such a rest, 
for we are told that God rested ; and surely his 
rest can be no fitful, transient, troubled rest, 
like ours. 

It will not be possible, within the limits of 
one sermon, to finish our examination of the 
Hebrew Sabbath. Already it is evident that 
there is much to be learned from a wise study 
of it. All that I have tried to do, to-day, is to 
set forth the purpose of that Sabbath, and the 
meaning of it. And for that reason I took for 
my text, not the commandment as it is written 
in Exodus, but the commandment as it is writ- 



142 The Sabbath Question. 

ten in Deuteronomy. The reason for the Jew- 
ish Sabbath which is given in Exodus, is the 
rest of God. The reason for it given in the 
Book of Deuteronomy, is the rest in Canaan. 
But from both books it is evident that the 
seventh-day Sabbath was not ordained for its 
own sake merely, but for some other and higher 
reason. It was a day of prophecy. It was a 
day of promise. Week after week it came to 
this Hebrew people, and found them sinful, 
toilsome, tired still. Generation after genera- 
tion they lived in Canaan ; and this day return- 
ing found them troubled, restless, sinful still. 
Centuries of hard experience taught them more 
and more perfectly the bitter lesson which 
found expression, at last, in the words of one 
of their own prophets, that the " wicked are 
like the troubled sea, which cannot rest." They 
could not rest. They were not at peace with 
God. Their kings and soldiers and legislators 
— David, Joshua, Moses — had not given them 
rest, could not give them rest. And yet here 
the day was, coming,, coming, in its regular 
return, and coming only to be a mockery, a 
bitter mockery, unless there was a real rest 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 143 

remaining. So they clung to the persuasion 
that there was such a rest. And at last the 
son of David came, another Joshua, a prophet 
greater than Moses, bringing grace and truth 
and life, and rest eternal. Then the signifi- 
cance of all these monumental days and rites 
and ceremonies became apparent. 

Of course, then, the seventh day was not the 
Sabbath, is not the Sabbath. The Sabbath is 
not a day of twenty-four hours at all. The 
seventh day may be a Sabbath ; or the first day 
may be a Sabbath, if there is any reason for 
making it so, as we shall by and by find there 
is a most sufficient reason ; any day may be 
a Sabbath, as John Calvin, at the time of the 
Reformation, seems to have proposed, most 
unwisely, to make Thursday a Sabbath ; l or, 
better still, every day of Christian life may be 
a Sabbath, — the type and prophecy, nay, more, 
the earnest and foretaste of the eternal rest. 
If the Sabbath of God be a mere twenty-four 
hours' rest, then it must be the seventh day ; 
and I do not see how any logic can escape the 
obligation to acknowledge it, or bridge the 

1 Cf. Hessey, p. 142, and Cox. vol. 2, p. 121, 



144 The Sabbath Question. 

insuperable chasm which, on that theory, sepa- 
rates the seventh day from the first, and from 
all others. But if the Sabbath be eternal in 
the heavens, and all days of time but shadowy 
types of that eternal day, then, whether it may 
be the seventh day that men commemorate, or 
the first day, or any day, or every day, can 
make no fatal difference. 

Nor is this all. The story of the wandering 
of these Hebrew tribes is not without its pres- 
ent and most practical significance to us, — 
the story of their wanderings and of their dis- 
appointments, and of their illusive types and 
shadows. " These things" said an apostle, 1 
" were our examples ; . . . and they are writ- 
ten for our admonition, upon whom the ends 
of the world are come." Have we not also 
wandered in deserts and in wildernesses, rest- 
less and unsatisfied ? Have not we been seek- 
ing rest in God's creatures, and not in God 
himself ? Have we not tried to be content 
with shadows rather than with the eternal sub- 
stance of the Sabbath ? And have we not 
learned — some of us, I am sure, have learned 

1 i Cor. x. i-ii. 



The Purpose of the Jewish Sabbath. 145 

at last — that there is rest for us only in God ? 
We have learned, at last, to say with St. 
Augustine, " Thou hast made us for thyself, 
and our heart is restless till it rest in thee." x 
Let us remember, then, that earth cannot fur- 
nish us the perfect Sabbath, — that time does 
not contain it. It is the rest of God. It is 
eternal in the heavens. 

This is the practical and important lesson 
with which I suspend this meditation. And to 
sum up and enforce what I have been trying to 
say, I borrow these stanzas, antique and quaint, 
but very beautiful and very true, from good 
George Herbert. The lesson which was taught 
the Hebrew people in their weekly Sabbath, the 
lesson which we need to learn by all our per- 
sonal human experiences, is the lesson which 
this poem also teaches, in language better than 
I can find : — 

" When God at first made man, 
Having a glasse of blessings standing by, 
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can : 
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, 
Contract into a span. 

1 Confessions, i. i. 



146 The Sabbath Question. 

So strength first made a way ; 
Then beautie fiow'd ; then wisdome, honor, pleasure 
When almost all was out, God made a stay, 
Perceiving that alone, of all'his treasure, 

Rest in the bottome lay. 

For, if I should (said he) 
Bestow this Jewell also on my creature, 
He would adore my gifts instead of me, 
And rest in nature, not the God of nature : 

So both should losers be. 

Yet let him keep the rest, 
But keep them with repining restlessnesse : 
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least, 
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse 

May tosse him to my breast." 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 147 



III. 



THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE 
JEWISH SABBATH. 

"therefore sattr same of tfje Pharisees, Wq\% man is not of 
(ffioo, because fje itcepetJj not tfje Sabbatfj flag." — John ix. 16. 

WHAT, then, had this man done by which 
the Sabbath day was violated ? And 
who was he who was proved thus to be " not 
of God " ? 

The story is familiar to us all. It was Jesus 
of Nazareth, the young prophet of Galilee, con- 
cerning whom some men had already begun to 
believe that he was the Messiah. It was now 
more than two years since he had begun his 
public ministry as a religious teacher ; and 
during all this time he had been conspicuous 
among men for words of singular wisdom, for 
deeds of very beautiful and tender compassion, 
and of wonderful power, — in a word, for a life 
spent in doing good. No one could lay to his 



148 The Sabbath Question. 

charge an unkind, dishonorable, or selfish act 
No one could accuse him of immorality, or of 
any violation of the law of love. He had ene- 
mies, to be sure, plenty of them — bitter ones ; 
enemies quick to detect iniquity in him, had 
there been iniquity ; enemies who were con- 
spiring against him, and, on one pretext or 
another, continually denouncing him as un- 
trustworthy and bad. They could not charge 
him with violating any moral law, but they 
could charge him with neglect of traditional 
ceremonies. They could not deny that he 
healed sick men ; but they could insist that he 
healed them in some irregular way, or by some 
malign power. If they were obliged to con- 
fess, sometimes, that he had done good, at least 
they could criticise his methods, and condemn, 
as evil, the place, the time, or some attendant 
circumstance. It is always instructive to know 
what a man's enemies say of him. And when 
they can find no charge to produce, except a 
quibble or a technicality, when they can say 
nothing against the spirit of a man, but only 
something against his forms, — such as a vio- 
lation of usage or tradition or ceremonial rite, 
■ — the fact is most significant. 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 149 

Such an instance was the one referred to in 
the text. Jesus, passing along through the 
streets of Jerusalem, had seen an unfortunate 
man who had been blind from his birth. Be- 
sides the calamity of blindness, there attached 
to him also some stigma of moral disgrace, as 
if his blindness must be the result of special 
and pre-eminent sinfulness, either on his own 
part or on the part of his parents, — so that 
the man was made out to be, not merely unfor- 
tunate, but infamous. We need not pursue the 
story, except to say that Jesus rejected per- 
emptorily the notion that the man's blindness 
was the mark of any conspicuous sinfulness ; 
and then, by an act of gracious power, re- 
moved the life-long darkness by which he had 
been afflicted, doing thus a double service to 
the unhappy man, and sending him away 
thankful and astonished. 

Certainly this was a kind and gracious thing 
to do : and certainly, the wisdom which Christ 
had shown in his exposure of the cruel notion 
held by his disciples, and by the community at 
large ; the power which he had shown in the 
miracle of healing ; the love which he had 



150 The Sabbath Question. 

shown in his treatment of the sufferer, — all 
these might have secured the approval of the 
Pharisees, and might have seemed to them, 
sitting as the religious authorities of the na- 
tion, like credentials of a divine mission on 
the part of Jesus. But, as it happened, the 
day on which this deed had been performed, 
was the weekly Sabbath, on which, according 
to the commandment, there must be no work 
performed. To open the eyes of the blind was 
work, — thus they argued ; and even our Lord 
himself seemed to admit it, — for when he did 
the miracle, it was with the solemn words, " I 
must work the works of him that sent me, 
while it is day." So, then, this was work : 
but the commandment forbids work on the 
Sabbath ; but this was on the Sabbath ; there- 
fore Jesus has not kept God's commandment ; 
therefore he cannot be of God, — and being 
not of God, no further hint was needful to 
indicate whence, in their opinion, he must be. 
All the wisdom of his words, all the power and 
skill of his deed, all the loving and pure com- 
passion of his spirit, was to pass for nothing, 
because he did not keep the Sabbath day ! Or, 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 1 5 1 

rather let us say, because he did not keep it 
as they thought it should be kept ; because his 
opinions did not square with theirs ; because 
his manners were not strict enough, according 
to their standard. 

I wish to take this story as giving us a 
glimpse of how the Jewish Sabbath was re- 
garded in the time of Christ, and of the strict 
and literal exactness with which the command 
to keep it holy was observed ; an exactness 
so strict and literal, that it might even make 
the day unholy, irksome, evil. Remember that 
the Pharisees were the religious teachers of the 
people, sitting, as our Lord said, in Moses' 
seat, and looked up to as the recognized and 
authoritative expounders of the law. Remem- 
ber also that this was not the only instance 
when they found fault with Jesus as a Sabbath- 
breaker. Over and over again this charge was 
brought, and in such a way as indicates that 
they were very much in earnest in it, and even 
believed themselves to be in the right in making 
it. On the other hand, our Lord himself seems 
to have been in no way careful to avoid giving 
occasion for the charge, even taking pains 



152 The Sabbath Question. 

sometimes to do things publicly upon the Sab- 
bath day which he knew might be complained 
of and brought up against him. And his reply 
to the Pharisees, when they made the charge, 
was, not that he was justified in violating the 
Sabbath, but that he had not violated the Sab- 
bath. He acknowledged that he was still a 
Jew, and that it was becoming in him to fulfil 
all righteousness. So he was circumcised. So 
he was baptized by John. So he offered sacri- 
fice and observed festivals. So he conformed 
to the law of Moses ; and, as I say, the way in 
which he defended himself, the ground which 
he took in reply to this accusation, was, that he 
had not broken the Sabbath, but had kept it. 

Which was right, — he, or they ? Was the 
Jewish Sabbath what they made it, or was it 
what he made it ? And, if they were wrong, 
wherein did their mistake consist ? 

We cannot hesitate, of course, in our answer 
to the first question. And the answer to the 
first involves the answer to the second. The 
Jewish Sabbath was meant to be a privilege. 
The Pharisees had made it a bondage. It was 
meant to be a holy day. But the Pharisees, 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 153 

by such interpretation of its holiness as they 
would have enforced on Jesus, made it an 
unholy day ; so that, though upon six days it 
might be lawful to do good, upon the seventh 
to do good was not lawful, and such an act as 
the opening a blind man's eyes became wicked. 
The Sabbath was meant to be a means. They 
would make it an end of itself. God designed 
it as a sign of something higher. They treated 
it as if it were itself the thing signified. As I 
said a week ago, it was a Sabbath, but not the 
perfect, the real Sabbath. The trouble with 
them was, that they treated it as if it were the 
real and perfect Sabbath. They are not the 
only ones who have fallen into this error, and 
have rested in the letter rather than in the 
spirit ; have been content with the body rather 
than with the soul of things ; have grasped at 
the shadow and let go the substance ; have 
stopped short with things seen and temporal, 
and not looked at the things which are unseen 
and eternal. 

This was the difference between Christ and 
the Pharisees. Christ's reverence for the law 
of Moses was not less than theirs, it was un- 



154 The Sabbath Qitestion. 

speakably greater. He did not come to destroy 
it, he came to fulfil it. He saw, and he aimed 
to show, that the spirit of that law was greater 
than the letter of it could hold, and must, 
presently, throw off the letter as a husk, and 
hinderance of its greatness. Guide-posts are 
good while one is journeying, but he does not 
need them when he has reached his journey's 
end. Hope is good, till one has the fruition of 
the thing hoped for ; and then it ceases to be 
necessary. So the Jewish types and prophecies 
were good, until the realities of which they 
spoke arrived, and then they were no longer 
useful. The time was close at hand when all 
these should pass away, — close at hand, but 
not yet quite present. Men were Jews yet. 
Even ' our Lord himself was a Jew, observing 
the Jewish law. He was in the flesh as yet. 
And though he was himself the truth to which 
all these types and monuments and ordinances 
pointed, yet the veil, that is to say, his flesh, hid 
him for the present. In a little while he would 
be lifted up ; the veil, that is to say, his flesh, 
would be laid aside ; he would be present in the 
Spirit, nearer, everywhere, always, — and then 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 155 

the ordinances were to cease. But as yet they 
were to be observed, and he himself set the 
example of perfect observance. 

One of these types and ordinances was the 
seventh-day Sabbath. Presently that was to 
cease. But it had not ceased as yet. It was a 
good thing, a useful type, a pleasant promise, 
a most serviceable means. It was made for 
man. And the true way to reverence it was to 
use it as a privilege, to employ it as a means. 
Without doubt Jesus rested on the seventh 
day, and was glad enough to rest. Without 
doubt, when the six days were over, with their 
trials in the carpenter's shop, or with their 
weary round of journeyings from village to 
village, with their thronging multitudes claim- 
ing his care and time and painful anxiety, — 
without doubt this seventh day was a blessed 
day to the fatigued and tired teacher and his 
twelve friends and followers. No doubt the 
privileges of the synagogue, with its worship, 
public and formal, of the God of Israel, were 
welcome. No doubt he rested from his weekly 
duties and employments, counting it a privilege 
and even a duty so to rest. But if the Pharisees 



156 The Sabbath Question. 

attempted to compel him to the observance of 
their foolish and unscriptural strictnesses : to 
say that, if he saw a blind man whom he could 
give sight to, he must let him stay blind ; if he 
saw a sick man, that he must not heal him ; if 
he passed hungry through the corn-fields, that 
he must not pluck, in passing, a few ears to 
eat, because all this was work, — then he would 
say, that the Pharisees were trying to make the 
commandment of God of none effect by their 
traditions, and were abusing the Sabbath in- 
stead of using it. 

It is probable that we have, even at this day, 
a mistaken impression concerning the Jewish 
Sabbath. From the repeated emphasis which 
is put upon the observance of it in the Hebrew 
Scriptures ; from the penalties which, by the 
Jewish law, were threatened and sometimes en- 
forced upon the violation of it ; from a false 
idea of what keeping a thing holy means, and 
of wherein holiness consists, — from these and 
other causes we have accustomed ourselves to 
believe that it was an irksome day, a sad and 
gloomy day, a fast, a day on which to afflict 
one's soul. It was not such a day. To make 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 157 

it such a day was to abuse it. If it was de- 
fended by penalties, it was for the same reason 
that a perverse child is prevented by penalties 
from over-exerting himself in any way, or from 
running into any kind of danger. To read of 
a man stoned for gathering sticks on the Sab- 
bath may startle us at first, and may make it 
look as if the day were a harsh and severe 
institution. But it was because the day was 
so beneficent that the crime of a man who 
undertook to destroy it was so heinous. Moses 
was very much in earnest, had to be very much 
in earnest ; and he was not willing that an in- 
stitution, which was given to be a blessing to 
the nation, through generation after generation, 
should be destroyed at the very outset by one 
rebellious and mischievous man. So he had 
him put to death, 1 and made of him a conspicu- 
ous example that was remembered through all 
coming time, so long as the Jews were a na- 
tion. But we make a great mistake if we sup- 

1 Num. xv. 32-36. It is to be observed that this, the only re- 
corded instance of the infliction of the death-penalty for Sabbath 
breaking, occurred " while the children of Israel were in the wilder- 
ness," — when the Sabbath was as yet a new thing, and the value of 
it needed to be signally emphasized. 



158 The Sabbath Question. 

pose, that because the penalties which guarded 
and preserved the day were severe, therefore 
the day itself was severe. The one only com- 
mandment concerning it was, that it should be 
a rest-day. No possible language could have 
conveyed to that nation of emancipated slaves 
a gladder idea of it than that it was a day on 
which they need not work. They knew what 
work was, with a very sorrowful knowledge, 
indeed ; but, for centuries, they had hardly 
known what rest was. And an ordinance 
which ordained for them a seventh part of 
their whole time, during which they need not 
work, but might sleep, and recreate and enjoy 
themselves, with the assurance that in so doing 
they were doing nothing wrong, but were even 
performing a sacred duty, with the knowledge 
that they were pleasing God by thus being 
happy, — this was a privilege so beneficent, a 
boon so gracious, that, when fairly understood, 
it could not fail to be a very welcome and most 
precious ordinance. 

If it seems to some that the injunction against 
work must have made the day a fast-day, it may 
be worth while to say a word or two upon that 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 159 

point. They could not, it is true, cook on the 
Sabbath day ; but to a rude and simple people 
that was no great deprivation. They could eat, 
and they could even feast. 1 Social visiting was 
not forbidden, nor the giving of a feast, pro- 
vided the feast involved no labor on the part of 
master or of servant in the household. In the 
statement of the law of the Sabbath given in 
Deuteronomy, the reason why there could be 
no cooking appears, — " that thy man-servant 
and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou/' 
It was not at all that the day should thus be 
made a fast-day. And it must be remembered, 
that in those early times, and among that rude 
and simple people, cooking had not become a 
fine art ; and it was thought possible to exist 
and even to be happy upon very simple fare. 
Whether the change which has taken place 

1 The incident recorded in Luke xiv. 1-24, especially v. 7, in- 
dicating that the feast was on a somewhat large scale, is sufficiently 
decisive on this point. But see also Alford's note on this passage, 
and Trench on the parable of " The Great Supper; " also the author- 
ities quoted by Cox, under the article " Feasting on the Sabbath;" 
also the article "Sabbath," in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; also 
the noteworthy article on "The Talmud," in the London Quarterly 
Review for October, 1867, Am. ed., p. 232. 



160 The Sabbath Question. 

since then, and the difference between our 
usages and tastes and theirs, is wholly an ad- 
vance, it is foreign to the scope of this dis- 
course to discuss. 

What I am insisting on is, that the seventh- 
day rest which Moses enjoined upon the Jewish 
people was designed to be a blessing and not a 
bondage. It was to be a symbol of a greater 
blessing in store for them, but it was also to 
be itself a blessing. It could scarcely speak 
to them of happiness hereafter, if it were not 
itself happy. It was to be made holy ; but 
holiness did not mean austerity nor acerbity 
nor asceticism. It was to be a pure day, a 
clean day, or, as the word translated " holy " 
may suggest by its derivation, 1 a bright day ; 
if you please, a shining or sunny day. Its 
cheerfulness was to prophesy the cheerfulness 
of heaven. Its social enjoyments were to sug- 
gest the fellowship of heaven. To be happy 
on this day was a privilege, nay, was even a 
duty. And you cannot find in all the law of 
Moses any thing that even looks like making 

1 SeeGesenius' Lexicon, s. v. Wlp, and the perhaps kindred &JHH, 
of which the primary idea is "to be bright." 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 161 

it a hardship. Was it any hardship to that 
people, aching in all their bones with their 
centuries of unpaid toil, to be told that they 
might rest ? * We know how a slave feels when 
he is told that he may have a holiday. We 
know how a school-boy feels when he is told 
that he may have a recess. To tell him that he 
must not study till the recess is over, to even 
impose a penalty upon him for doing so, is no 
such very dreadful thing. 

Unquestionably, the seventh-day Sabbath be- 
gan to lose something of its original character, 
long before the time of the gospel history. 
Studying the Old Testament, we discover on 
the one hand a growing formality, on the other 
hand a growing superstition. It was character- 
istic of that Hebrew people, it is characteristic 
of all peoples more or less, to run from one 
extreme to another. After they came to be 
settled in their own land, and had begun to 

1 A striking illustration of this is to oe found in a fact related by 
an observant traveller concerning the slaves in the Southern States. 
No hymn sung in their religious meetings was more popular than 
<; Welcome, sweet day of rest." At a Sunday-morning prayer-meet- 
ing it would sometimes be sung three or four times over in the course 
of the hour. 



1 62 The Sabbath Question. 

feel the pride of prosperity, and to forget the 
hardships of their Egyptian slavery, it was not 
pleasant to be reminded all the time of that 
degrading fact. When a man gets to be rich, 
he does not like to be reminded that he was 
once poor. When a man has achieved distinc- 
tion of any sort, he will not thank you to tell 
him that he or his father was once a very hum- 
ble and ordinary man. It hurts his pride. So 
with this people. They were not very fond of 
remembering that they were servants in the 
land of Egypt. But this was what their sev- 
enth-day Sabbath was designed to remind them 
of, through all generations. So it became con- 
venient to them, presently, to fix their atten- 
tion upon the day, rather than upon what it 
commemorated. So, too, when they were en- 
grossed with earthly things, had waxed fat and 
sordid, and had learned the vices of prosperity, 
it was not pleasant to have this seventh day 
come pricking in upon their luxury and sloth 
and sensuality, and reminding them that here 
was not their rest, — that their true rest was 
beyond, that their real rest was above. So, for 
this reason also, it was convenient to fix their 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 1 63 

attention on the day itself, and not on what it 
prophesied. The day was meant to point back- 
ward, and to point forward. But it was not 
pleasant for this ungrateful and sordid people 
to look either way. Backward was Egypt, and 
the disgrace of slavery. Forward was — who 
cared for what was forward ? " Let us eat and 
drink and be merry," here and now : we need 
no other rest ! 

So, easily enough, naturally enough, the day 
came to be, either a merely formal thing, or else 
a dreadfully superstitious thing. It had come 
to be a mere form in the time of the prophet 
Isaiah. The people had ignored its meaning ; 
and, though they kept up the show of its ob- 
servance, they considered it a bore, and they 
made of it a mockery. So that God is repre- 
sented as saying to them at the beginning of 
Isaiah's prophecy, 1 in indignant and sorrowful 
reproof, " Bring no more vain oblations ; . . . 
the new moons and Sabbaths ... I cannot 
away with. . . . Your new moons and your 
appointed feasts my soul hateth." Their re- 
ligious observances, of which the Sabbath was 

1 Chap. i. 13, 14. 



164 The Sabbath Question. 

the central and most conspicuous institution, 
had come to be a mere form. They meant 
nothing, expressed nothing, suggested nothing. 
The soul had gone out of them ; and, though 
the body remained, it was a dry and dead body. 
The Sabbath was no longer " a delight, — the 
holy of the Lord, and honorable." 

A still more perfect picture of this merely 
formal observance of the Jewish Sabbath is sug- 
gested by a passage in the book of the prophet 
Amos. This prophet was a contemporary of 
Isaiah ; and his exhortations to the nation are 
prompted by the same circumstances, the same 
sins, the same errors, which give point to the 
prophecies of Isaiah. The selfish and corrupt 
people are described (chap. viii. 5, 6) as fretting 
beneath the Sabbath rest, as if it were a yoke 
imposed upon them, and as having turned what 
was a privilege into a meaningless and irksome 
formality. "When will the new moon be 
gone," they say, "that we may sell corn? and 
the Sabbath that we may set forth wheat, 
making the ephah small and the shekel great " 
(giving scant measure and charging a large 
price), "and falsifying the balances by deceit ? " 



Use and Abuse of the JeioisJi Sabbath. 165 

Here, even in a more striking form than in the 
passages before quoted, is the picture of a Sab- 
bath which had lost all significance, which com- 
memorated nothing, which pointed forward to 
nothing, which was without value or charm ; a 
monument from which the inscription had been 
obliterated ; a guide-post which pointed no way. 
Cherished for itself alone, — when it was cher- 
ished at all, — it had become distasteful to men 
and a mockery to God. 

Well, the result of this religious declension, 
of which the contempt of the Sabbath was the 
most conspicuous instance, was disaster and 
captivity to the nation. Since they had learned 
to hold the thought of rest so cheap, they 
should be sent to school again to learn the 
value of it. Captivity in Egypt had made it 
very welcome once ; perhaps captivity in As- 
syria might make it very welcome again. And 
so there came upon the Jews that period of 
exile and disgrace, seventy years of sorrow and 
humiliation and hardship. 1 When they came 
back again into their own land, they began to 
observe the Sabbath with renewed zeal. Stricter 

1 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21. 



1 66 The Sabbath Question. 

and more detailed regulations for its observ- 
ance were enjoined by Nehemiah. 1 But the 
significance of the day as a religious privilege 
was never quite regained. And presently the 
observance of it, enforced thus by the strong 
arm of the law, began to degenerate into super- 
stition. The headstrong nation had not learned 
its lesson yet. They had learned that to give 
up their Sabbath was not safe. But they had 
not learned that their Sabbath was a blessing, 
and not a bondage. So they kept the clay, but 
they kept it under terror. They began to in- 
vent new laws concerning it. The comprehen- 
sive law of Moses, which insisted simply and 
broadly, that on this day every one should have 
the right to rest, was thought to be insufficient. 
Stricter and stricter were the lines of obliga- 
tion drawn, till, a little while before the time of 
our Saviour, during the progress of the Macca- 
bean wars, a thousand Jews, brave but mis- 
taken men, were slain without resistance on 
the Sabbath day, because the superstitious rigor 
which had grown up since the captivity made 
them think it unlawful to defend themselves. 2 

1 Neh. x. 31 ; xiii. 15, 22. 

2 1 Mace. ii. 38 ; and Josephus' Antiquities, B. xii., ch. vi. 2. 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 167 

Such a thing could scarcely have occurred in 
the time of Moses. It was a rigorous observ- 
ance of the letter, and the letter killed. 

This incident, indeed, gave to the supersti- 
tious notion concerning the Sabbath a great 
shock ; but it did not cure it. The scribes and 
Pharisees kept binding burdens heavier and 
heavier all the time, till, in the time of our Lord, 
they were most grievous to be borne. One 
school of zealots even taught, that, in whatever 
posture the Sabbath day should overtake a man, 
in that posture he must remain till the day was 
over ; if standing when the sun set on Friday 
evening, then let him stand till Saturday at 
evening ; if sitting, let him sit still, because to 
rise was to work. I might multiply instances, 
some of them so trivial that they would be even 
unfit to mention, of this same literalism, of this 
superstitious bondage to the seventh day. 

I do not say that all these notions were 
current among the Pharisees and indorsed by 
them, but they are extreme examples of what 
was the prevalent Pharisaic error. To open 
the eyes of a blind man on the Sabbath day, 
was a crime so great that the goodness of the 



1 68 The Sabbath Question. 

deed must pass for nothing, — this was the 
position which they held. The day was posi- 
tively made unholy, by being reverenced for 
itself and not for what it signified. They made 
an idol of it. They acted as if this day of 
twenty-four hours was what men were made for, 
and as if they should expend their energies in 
its observance. 

I have drawn out this history at a good deal 
of length, to show wherein the mistake of the 
Pharisees consisted. They had not used the 
Sabbath, they had suffered it to use them. 
They had swerved from the Mosaic command- 
ment, by making the sign conspicuous, and 
losing sight of the thing signified. Kept for 
itself, as a dry ordinance, it was worse than 
useless. It did not turn their thoughts back- 
ward along the way through which the Lord 
their God had led them ; nor did it turn their 
thoughts forward, telescopically opening up 
eternity before them. It was an institution to 
be microscopically scrutinized, to be given to 
God because he had arbitrarily demanded it, 
to be literally kept, although the letter might 
be irksome, cruel, deadly. 



Use and Abuse of the Jewish Sabbath. 169 

It was not so to Jesus. He appealed from 
the Pharisees to Moses, from the letter to the 
spirit. He showed how the Sabbath was a 
means, and not an end ; was to be observed as 
a privilege, and as a prophecy of the eternal 
Sabbath, and not to be worn as a yoke of bond- 
age, bowing men's faces down to earth instead 
of raising them to heaven. Such a privilege 
and prophecy it was to him. How he must 
have prized its welcome rest, when, footsore, 
weary, burdened, almost broken-hearted with 
the heavy load of human griefs and sicknesses 
which he had taken on himself to carry, and 
with no time that he could call his own, this 
day would come with opportunities for quiet, 
for retirement, for religious worship in the 
synagogue, or on the mountains, or in whatever 
solitudes might be found, and for fellowship 
with the few friends who loved and trusted 
him ! And what wonderful and pathetic sacred- 
ness of meaning must the day have had to him, 
— speaking to him, as it did, of that other 
Jesus, who, centuries before, had led his people 
over Jordan into Canaan, but had not been 
able, after all, to give them rest, — speaking to 



170 The Sabbat J 1 Question. 

him also of the rest from sin into which he 
himself had come to gather them ! 

Brethren, this Jewish Sabbath is a thing of 
the past. It was a prophecy, a type, a shadow. 
It is, as I shall presently show, no longer bind- 
ing. But if we think there are no lessons to be 
taught us by the history of it, we shall strangely 
err. For the mistake of the Pharisees has 
been reproduced in Christian times. Their one 
great error was in taking shadow for substance ; 
in supposing the Sabbath to be nothing but a 
twenty-four hours' day, not seeing that the real 
Sabbath is eternal in the heavens. Perhaps we 
have made a similar mistake. They thought it 
was the seventh day. Perhaps we think it is 
the first day. But it is not the first. It was 
not the seventh. The seventh was a type of it. 
The first may be a promise of it. But the real 
rest is unseen, spiritual, eternal. 

And this general mistake of theirs included, 
as we have seen, two subordinate errors. This 
first : thinking that it was an earthly day 
merely, they made it sometimes a formality, 
and sometimes a superstition. First they neg- 
lected it and violated it. Then they were afraid 
of it and worshipped it. 



Use and Abuse of the Jeivish Sabbath. 171 

And this secondly : regarding it in such a 
narrow, literal way, they came to think that 
they were made for it, not it for them ; that 
God had, of his arbitrary will, enjoined it, not 
for their use and interest, but for his own ; and 
that their obligation to observe it was a duty 
which they owed to him, and not a privilege 
conferred upon themselves. Christ, by his 
right use of the day, exposed this error. He 
showed them that their interest and God's inter- 
est were not antagonistic, were not separate 
and twain, but one. God's rest was their rest. 
They were to keep the day to him, because he 
had given it to them. They were not made for 
it, but it for them. 1 

This was the true idea of the Jewish Sab- 
bath. It has seemed necessary to draw out 
this idea, and to distinguish the right observ- 
ance of the day from the abuse of it, in order 
that we may be ready for the intelligent appre- 
ciation of our weekly Christian festival. For 
the Lord's Day is the heir of the Jewish Sab- 
bath. It has displaced it throughout the Chris- 

1 Dr. Hessey's comment on this important verse (Mark ii. 27) is 
interesting and forcible. (See Hessey, p. 123.) 



172 The Sabbath Question. 

tian world. It has inherited its memories and 
its hopes. It has been treated with the same 
abuses, and marked by the same errors. To the 
consideration of this Christian festival we must 
next address ourselves. 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 173 



IV. 

THE LORD'S DAY A PRIVILEGE. 

" &n& upon tfjc first Uag of tfje foeeft, fofjm tfrc otsctples 
came tcgetfjn: to breaft fcrcao, ^|attl prcacfjcti unto tfjem, reaog 
10 tJcpart on tije morrofo ; ano continues f)ts speecfj tttttil mio- 
mgf)t. " — Acts xx. 7. 

IT is from such slight hints as that afforded 
by this text, that we get what imperfect* 
knowledge we possess concerning the life and 
usages of the early Christians. The life of 
Christ himself upon the earth is only partially 
reported : although, being reported by four dif- 
ferent biographers, we get glimpses of it from 
four different points of view ; and so the record 
gives forth more light, as a diamond does when 
it is cut with facets. But, when we know so 
little of the life of the Master, it is no wonder 
that we know less of the life of his disciples. 
Concerning these first pillars in the Christian 
church, and concerning the great work which 



174 The Sabbath Question. 

was given them to do, — the work of moulding 
the institutions of Christianity, and defining 
and constructing its theology, — the authorita- 
tive record is very incomplete. The book of 
the Acts of the Apostles, and the hints in the 
various letters of the apostles, are the only in- 
spired sources of information ; and even from 
these the knowledge on these points has to be 
carefully and laboriously dug out, like precious 
metal from a bed of ore. 'Precisely how the 
first Christian churches were organized, for 
example ; precisely what was their doctrinal 
belief ; precisely what were their religious 
usages and ordinances, — these are questions 
which it is not easy authoritatively to answer. 
" How was baptism administered ? " is a ques- 
tion which divides the church with a singular 
and almost hopeless bitterness of division, even 
at the present day. But if we search the New 
Testament for explicit directions to baptize in 
this or that way, and in none other, we can- 
not find them. Some people wonder at this. 
" How much trouble might have been saved to 
the church," they say, " what wrangling, what 
breaches of Christian charity, what scandal, 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 175 

what disunion, might have been prevented, if 
in some one of the Gospels, or in some one 
of Paul's epistles, there had been ten words of 
positive commandment on this subject ! " But, 
search the whole New Testament as we may, 
those ten words of positive commandment 
cannot be found. 

These are illustrations and examples of one 
general fact which needs to be constantly borne 
in mind, and which may be stated as follows : 
The kingdom of heaven which our Lord Jesus 
Christ established on the earth, and of which he 
himself is the eternal King, is an invisible and 
spiritual kingdom. It is within men. And its 
force and operation is from within, outward. It 
makes its appearance on the earth unarmed, 
unfurnished with worldly resources. It brings 
with it no laws written on stone tables, or on 
parchment rolls, or on paper pages. It estab- 
lishes nb courts to minister its justice. It 
erects no throne, and provides no sceptre for 
the sway of its submissive subjects. It is not 
meat nor drink. It is not circumcision nor 
uncircumcision. It is not observance of rites 
and ordinances, nor is it non-observance of 






176 The Sabbath Question. 

rites and ordinances. It may use them, or it 
may refuse them. It is spiritual. Righteous- 
ness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost, — this is 
the kingdom. Love, — this is the essence of 
it. Trust, — this is the condition and com- 
mencement of ' it. What Christ brought from 
heaven to earth was not an institution nor a 
cluster of institutions ; not a law nor a code 
of laws ; nor a form, nor a set of forms ; but 
a spirit, a living spirit, a divine spirit, even the 
Holy Spirit, the eternal Helper and Sanctifier, 
to dwell in men, moulding them, strengthen- 
ing them, giving them life, making them, and, 
through them, making all things new ! 

Therefore, when our Lord finished the work 
which he had to do in his flesh, and ascended 
into heaven, he left after him no organized 
church, and, I had almost said, no instituted 
ordinances. Baptism, indeed (which was al- 
ready practised in the Jewish church), he 
sanctioned as a fit and useful, and even, com- 
monly, a necessary symbol of discipleship. 
And the Lord's Supper, too, he instituted as 
at once a symbol and a means of the com- 
munion of his saints with him, and one with 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 177 

another. But these two exceptions are so sim- 
ple as scarcely to do more than confirm the 
rule. He left no churches on the earth. He 
left disciples, and committed to them the organ- 
ization of churches, — to them, guided and in- 
spired by the Spirit of wisdom and of love. 
Questions of order, matters of detail, habits 
of worship and of Christian living, these were 
all things of Christian expediency, which needed 
not to be ordained beforehand. The living 
Spirit was to construct its body, fashioning it 
in strength and beauty, and in constant growth 
of perfectness. 

To declare, then, as it seems to me we must 
honestly declare, that we can find no command- 
ment in the New Testament, nor indeed in the 
whole Bible, requiring the observance of a 
weekly Sabbath on the part of Christians, 
need not surprise anybody. You can find no 
commandment requiring the organization of 
churches after a given form ; no pattern shown, 
as there was to Moses in the mount, after 
which the institutions of the church must be 
constructed. You cannot find any catalogue 
of maxims covering cases of conscience, obedi- 



178 The Sabbath Question. 

ence to which is a test of discipleship. Nay, 
more. You do find the first inspired teachers 
of the church expressly disavowing the right 
of anybody to impose such maxims and regu- 
lations upon the church, to require the observ- 
ance of feasts or fasts, to compel or to forbid 
any outward observance. So that we may even 
say, that if there were found in the New Testa- 
ment any text explicitly requiring the observ- 
ance of the first day of the week, for example, 
as a holy day, that text would be in such mani- 
fest and glaring contrast with the whole spirit 
of the remaining contents of the New Testa- 
ment, that its spuriousness would be prima 
facie probable. 

But, if we find no commandment in the New 
Testament which fits the case, we surely find 
none in the Old. We do, indeed, find there 
a commandment requiring the observance of a 
weekly Sabbath ; but it is addressed, not to the 
Christian church, but to the Jewish church, and 
is obeyed more or less perfectly by the Jew- 
ish people to this day. The apostle Paul dis- 
tinctly, and in more places than one, rejects the 
suggestion that that law is obligatory on him ; 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 179 

and while he might be willing to keep the 
weekly Sabbath, if it would be of any comfort 
to his brethren to have him do so, yet when 
anybody should undertake to make him keep 
it, or to insist that he was bound to keep it, he 
would give place to such an one by subjection, 
— no, not for an hour. All the energy of his 
manly Christian soul resented such a binding 
of his liberty ; and he shook off the entangle- 
ment of that yoke. I do not see how any fair 
interpretation of passages in Paul's epistles like 
those which I read this morning (such as Col. 
ii. 16 — iii. 11 ; Rom. xiv. 5, 6; and almost the 
whole of the Epistle to the Galatians), can 
avoid the conclusion that he, at least, regarded 
the commandment of the Sabbath as at an 
end. 1 

In that conclusion the whole Christian 
church has in practice, and for the most part 
in theory, acquiesced. In practice, I say : for, 
if the fourth commandment is obligatory, it is 
the seventh day which it enjoins ; and the 
Christian church, with insignificant exceptions, 
has never observed the seventh day. And 

1 See especially Alford's long note on Col. ii. 16, 17. 



i8o • The Sabbath Question. 

in theory : for although some theologians be- 
fore the Reformation regarded the law of the 
Sabbath as still in force, 1 only contriving in 
some illogical and unauthorized way to twist 
it from the seventh day to the first ; and, 
although other theologians in the reformed 
church (not all of them, by any means, but 
some of them) have taken the same ground, 
— yet, on the whole, the verdict of the church 
has been most clearly in agreement with the 
verdict of the apostle Paul. 

I confess, then, with the utmost frankness 
and honesty, that I can find no commandment, 
either in the New Testament or in the Old, 
obliging me to keep a weekly Sabbath. Not 
in the New: for there I am distinctly told to 
" let no man judge me" in respect of a holy 
day, ... or of the Sabbaths ; not only am I 
not obliged to keep them, but I am to resist 
those who would so oblige me. And not in 
the Old ; for there I find a commandment ad- 
dressed to Jews and not to Christians, and 

1 There is some doubtful trace of this opinion, as early as the 
third century, in Tertullian ; but it was not till the sixth century that 
it became distinctly and formally declared. See Hessey's Third 
Lecture, especially pp. 77-96. 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 181 

requiring, if it requires any thing, the observ- 
ance of the seventh day and not the first. 

It cannot be said in reply to this, that the 
law of the Sabbath, being a part of what is 
known as the Ten Commandments, distinguished 
by a peculiar dignity from the rest of the law, 
and graven expressly upon stone tables, remains 
permanent and binding upon all men, though 
the ceremonial law is passed away. To say this 
would be to beg the question ; to say this would 
be expressly to gainsay the words of the apos- 
tle Paul already quoted. If the law of the 
Sabbath, as being a part of the Ten Command- 
ments, had been permanently binding, Paul 
would hardly have taken pains to make obedi- 
ence to it optional, as he distinctly does. Be- 
sides, where do we find any exception of these 
Ten Commandments from the acknowledged ful- 
filment or supersedure of the law by Christian- 
ity ? It is the law as a whole that is superseded. 
Are we, then, to be told that this, by far the 
most important part of it, is still in force ? 

But some man will say that I am proving too 
much ; that on this principle, and if the Ten 
Commandments are superseded, then I leave 



1 82 The Sabbath Question. 

men free to steal, to kill, to commit adultery, to 
covet, and so on. To which the obvious answer 
is, that men are not left free to do these things ; 
but it is because they are in conflict with the 
Spirit, not because they are in conflict with 
the commandment. The law was superseded 
by the Spirit. But even of the Spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus there is also a law, the law of 
liberty, the law of love. And there are some 
things on the stone tables, and some things in 
the parchment-books of Moses, which men 
everywhere and always are bound to observe. 
But why are they bound to observe them ? 
Because they are graven on stone or written on 
parchment ? No. But they were graven on 
stone or written on parchment because men are 
bound by the Spirit to observe them. I must 
not steal. Why must I not steal ? Because it 
is so written in the Jewish law ? No. But it is 
so written in the Jewish law, and in every 
other law, because I must not steal. It is 
wrong to kill. Why is it wrong to kill ? Be- 
cause the sixth commandment forbids killing? 
No. But the sixth commandment forbids kill- 
ing because it is wrong to kill. My argument 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 183 

is not dangerous. It does not prove too much. 
And when I say that Christianity superseded 
the Jewish law, I mean, just as Paul meant, 
that it superseded the whole of the Jewish law. 
I may use portions of that law as a valuable 
and more or less perfect summary of universal 
moral duty. But I may not argue that this or 
that is universal moral duty, merely because I 
find it in that law. I say that it is safe to forbid 
stealing by an appeal to the Spirit of Christ. 
It is safe to forbid covetousness by an appeal to 
that love which is the living power of his king- 
dom. It is safe to ground all duty here, to rest 
all obligation here. If I can make an argument 
for a weekly Sabbath on this ground, then I 
can defend it. If I cannot, then my right to 
insist upon it must be abandoned. If I can 
show that the Spirit of Christ prompts any 
such observance ; if I can show that love, which 
is the fulfilling of the law, — love to our God 
and Father, love to our Lord Jesus Christ, love 
to our brethren for whom he died, love to our 
own souls which he has purchased with his 
precious blood, — if, I say, I can show that 
love, which is the one great law, the only law 



184 The Sabbath Question. 

of Christ, constrains us to this usage, or even 
that it finds a natural and helpful expression in 
this usage, — then I will urge it with all Chris- 
tian zeal and by all fit methods. But, unless I 
can show this, I cannot urge it upon any man, 
any more than I could urge the feast of taber- 
nacles or the rite of circumcision. 1 

I know that it will seem to some that I am 
taking much unnecessary trouble on myself, 
and that I am going by a circuitous and difficult 
course to my result, when there is the easy and 
short cut of the fourth commandment at my 
service. But I have lived long enough already 
to see the mischief of supporting a good cause 
by bad reasons, of defending truth by false 
argument, of risking battles in the maintenance 
of right by the use of wrong methods and by 
making a stand upon untenable positions. Of 
this error I desire not knowingly to be guilty. 
I desire, not merely to inculcate Christian truth, 
but to do it, so far as may be, with reasonable 
justification and explanation of it. And I know 
that it is never wise, that it is never right, to 
win a temporary victory for truth by winking 
out of sight an error. 

1 See note at the end of this sermon. 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 185 

Therefore, in this and subsequent discourses, 
I rest my defence of our observance of the first 
day of the week, not on the fourth command- 
ment, but on the law of love, on the Spirit of 
Christ. And after this long digression I come 
back to point out what significance the text 
has in this discussion, and what bearing on 
the important argument which I have taken in 
hand. 

It is, as I said at the outset, one of the very 
few passages in the New Testament which 
indicate that the first day of the week was 
marked by the first disciples with any special 
observance. There is, as I say, no command- 
ment requiring its observance ; but is there, 
then, any evidence that the observance of it 
was a matter of general Christian usage ? This 
text helps to answer the last question, and 
bears somewhat important testimony to the fact 
of such usage. The argument from it, in a 
word, is this : — 

The apostle Paul and his travelling compan- 
ions, going from Philippi to Ephesus, and so 
back from their missionary labors into Syria, 
came, after a voyage of five days from his last 



1 86 The Sabbath Question. 

port, to Troas, where a little church of Chris- 
tian disciples had been gathered. Here, says 
the story, told by one of the party, "we abode 
seven days," — the seven days closing with 
the first day of the week, — as if they had 
been waiting for the first day of the week to 
come for some special reason. What was the 
reason ? " Upon the first day of the week, 
when we came together to break bread" (the 
language seems to indicate an habitual act, — 
as if it were a thing of course that they should 
meet for worship and fellowship on that day), 
"Paul preached unto them, ready to depart" 
(or being about to depart) "on the morrow," 
— apparently having prolonged his stay espe- 
cially for the sake of spending Sunday with the 
church, as if he knew that then would be the 
best of all opportunities for meeting them. 
Full of zeal and of enjoyment of their compan- 
ionship, he continued his discourse till mid- 
night, and even prolonged the communion 
season till daybreak. And so he departed, — 
commencing his journey before the Sunday 
had expired ; for the day, of course, was counted 
from sunset to sunset. Two facts, then, seem 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 187 

taught by this incident. First, that the day 
was regarded as a day of religious privilege, 
even in apostolic days, and was sanctioned by 
apostolic example as an opportunity of religious 
assembly for worship and fellowship ; and, sec- 
ondly, that it was not regarded with any such 
strictness of obligation as that the apostle was 
hindered from commencing his journey upon 
it. Both of these facts are important. 

But why was it regarded as a day of especial 
religious privilege ? The answer is obvious. 
Already the division of time into weeks of seven 
days existed ; and the fitness and convenience 
of this division were so great that it was never 
to be abandoned, but rather to become universal. 
Indeed, although the week of seven days comes 
to us and to the world from the Hebrew prac- 
tice, it may even be said to be a natural divis- 
ion of time, founded upon the phases of the 
moon. At any rate, it is a division of time 
which has proved its fitness and convenience 
by the test of use ; and all efforts which have 
been made to improve upon it — to make a 
week of ten days, for example, as in France 
during the time of her revolution — have sig- 



1 88 The Sabbath Question. 

nally failed. I say, then, that the week of seven 
days existed in the Jewish world, out of which 
the first Christians were gathered. Any great 
and memorable event, any event of singular 
and permanent gladness or of deep and abiding 
sorrow, occurring on the first day of any week, 
then, or on the fifth day of any week, would be 
remembered, as a matter of course, and by nat- 
ural and inevitable association, when the first 
day or the fifth day of the next week would 
come around. And, if the event thus connected 
with that day was one of importance enough, 
it would be still remembered when the next 
week came, and when the next came, and the 
next. And if, perhaps, this great event con- 
nected with it was one of which the grandeur 
and significance grew no less but rather greater 
as the weeks and months and years rolled by ; 
if it should prove to be an event so sublime, 
so transcendent, so full of gladness and promise 
and hope, that time could take away nothing 
from its meaning and glory, but could only add 
to it ; if, also, it were an event which pointed 
forward all the time, as well as backward, 
requiring to be cherished, not as a memory 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 189 

only, but also, and even more constantly, as 
a prophecy, — then, as the day came around, 
each weekly observance of it would make the 
next more sure and more sacred, till the usage 
should become so venerable, so holy, so pre- 
cious, that to touch it with the interference of 
rude hands would be a sacrilege intolerable. 
And when the day had won such sanctity as 
this, and reached such singular pre-eminence ; 
when it had come to be so valued and beloved, 
by reason of its clustering associations, by all 
Christian souls ; when with unanimous consent 
the church of Christ, which, as we have seen, 
is constantly inspired and guided by his living 
Spirit, had made the day a festival, — I think 
it would be as much ordained of God as if the 
ordinance had been written on the overarching 
skies, or graven on the everlasting hills. Is 
not the voice of the Christian people, in some 
true and proper sense, the voice of God ? 

Thus I indicate the line of argument to be 
employed. And now, very briefly, let us follow 
it out. We all know what was the one great 
event by which the first day of the week was 
made illustrious forever. It was the resur- 



190 The Sabbath Question. 

rection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the most sub- 
lime event in human history, the event which 
was the very keystone of that divine arch of 
promise by which the ruined world is spanned. 
On the first day of the week, he rose again 
from the dead. Do you suppose that group of 
sorrowing disciples who had spent the Jewish 
Sabbath in such depths of wondering despair, 
whose festival of rest had been turned, that 
week, into such weary gloom, whose last hope 
of the rest which Moses had spoken of, which 
Joshua had prefigured, which David had sung 
of, had flickered and gone out upon that gloomy 
seventh day, — do you think, I say, that they 
could ever possibly forget upon what day it 
was that there burst in upon their darkened 
souls the sudden and bewildering truth which 
turned their darkness into day, which kindled 
to new brightness the extinguished flame of 
hope, — which re-awakened all the expectation 
of a promised rest, — which opened up the 
very heavens to them in an infinite vista of 
glory ? Could they ever forget what day it 
was that turned their sorrow into a joy that no 
man could thenceforth take from them ; that 



The Lord f s Day a Privilege. 191 

made the most timid and distrustful of them 
resolutely bold, so that they went everywhere 
preaching " Jesus and the resurrection ; " that 
furnished them thenceforward with their rally- 
ing cry, their most blessed gospel, their most 
resistless argument ? Could they forget what 
day this was ? Surely they could not forget it. 
They did not forget it. From the very first, 
there are indications that they marked it with 
peculiar emphasis. All the evangelists take 
pains to mention it as the day of resurrection. 
In John's Gospel it is recorded that the Lord 
appeared to his disciples at their assembly on 
the first recurrence of the resurrection day, — 
that is, on the eighth day after the day on which 
he rose, — marking it thus by peculiar honor. 
So we find, in this text, the assemblage on the 
first day of the week spoken of as if it were al- 
ready a Christian usage. So elsewhere we find 
the apostle Paul advising that the first day of 
the week be used for charitable purposes. So we 
find the apostle John speaking of "the Lord's 
Day " as a recognized day, on which he was "in 
the Spirit." 1 Such hints as these we find in 

. x See Alford's interesting note on Rev. i. 10, 



192 The Sabbath Question 

the New Testament, that, from the very first, it 
was impossible for the first day of the week to 
come without bringing to Christian men mem- 
ories of sacred gladness, and welcome, and 
beautiful prophecies of hope. It pointed back- 
ward to the resurrection of the Lord, — a fact 
which only seemed to grow more glorious as, 
in the process of the weeks and years, it grew 
more distant. It pointed forward to their own 
resurrection, — a fact which grew more wel- 
come and more real as, in the process of the 
weeks and years, it came more near. 

Such hints as these, I say, we find in the 
New Testament, — such hints as these, and 
only these. I believe I have enumerated all 
of them. The verse which I have taken for 
a text is one of the strongest of them all, 
perhaps the very strongest. 

But now, if any man will say that these few 
scattered hints, if they are all that the New 
Testament affords, furnish a very flimsy basis 
on which to rest the obligation to observe the 
first day of the week as a distinctly holy day, 
I quite agree with him. They do furnish a 
most insufficient ground on which to rest that 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 193 

obligation. I rest no such obligation on them. 
I hesitate to rest such obligation anywhere. I 
do not dare to use that word " obligation," lest 
I expose myself to the censure of the apostle 
Paul. If I go about obliging people to observe 
the first day, or the seventh day, or any other 
day, I seem to hear the stern voice of that great 
apostle saying over again to me what he said 
once to the churches of Galatia : " How turn 
ye again to the weak and beggarly elements 
whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage ? 
Ye observe days and months and times and 
years. I am afraid of you, lest I have be- 
stowed upon you labor in vain." I do not 
ground upon these texts, I cannot ground upon 
these texts, an obligation. I cannot find in 
them, or in any others, a commandment. But 
I do find in them a warrant for the privilege, 
a vindication of the right, to dignify the Lord's 
Day, and to hallow it. If I can make men see 
the worth of this privilege, if I can make men 
feel the value of this right, then I can even 
urge it on them as a duty. For, in Christ's 
kingdom, privilege is duty, and duty privilege. 
To his disciples, right involves responsibility. 



194 The Sabbath Question. 

The right of suffrage, for example, involves, as 
I have more than once insisted from this pulpit, 
the duty of suffrage. So the privilege of rest 
becomes to weary men the duty of rest. So 
the right to celebrate the weekly festival of the 
Lord's resurrection, and the weekly prophecy 
and promise of our own, devolves on tired 
and burdened men, immersed in care, and con- 
stantly surrounded by temptation and distract- 
ing evils, the responsibility of celebrating it 
with worship and repose. If the opportunity 
is given, — a day of religious opportunity, — 
the opportunity must be redeemed, 1 " because 
the days are evil." 

Coming at it thus from the side of privilege, 
not as Jews, who still are bounden by the 
law, but rather as Christians to whom Christ 
has given the liberty of sons, the argument for 
the Lord's Day begins to take on shape and 
definiteness. That this is the true way to 
come at it, I have no doubt. That this is the 
way in which the Christian church came at it, 
is a matter of historic fact, and is even capable 
of historic proof. 

1 Eph. v. 16; where "redeeming the time" is, literally, "rescu- 
ing thf opportunity." 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 195 

For some years after the resurrection of our 
Lord, the Christian disciples were largely Jews, 
who had been trained under the law of Moses, 
and who had come to love the institutions, 
rites, and ordinances of the Hebrew church. 
To such, the immediate and complete abandon- 
ment of their Jewish customs was not easy 
nor desirable. If there were any who could 
not see their way clear to give up the rite of 
circumcision, they might keep the rite of cir- 
cumcision for themselves and for their chil- 
dren ; only they must not impose it upon 
others who could see no reason for it. Just 
as nowadays we say to any who cannot see 
their way clear to any form of baptism except 
immersion, Very well, you may employ that 
form if you desire, for yourselves ; only you 
must not try to make us use it, if our con- 
science leaves us free to try some other mode. 
So with regard to the Jewish Sabbath. There 
were many who could not give it up. It was 
a privilege which they could not bear to sur- 
render. It was a custom which they had so 
long employed, from childhood, always, every- 
where, that they could not drop it. Very well, 



196 The Sabbath Question. 

then, said the apostle, keep it. " He that re- 
gardeth the day regardeth it unto the Lord." 
But do not let him say to his brother Chris- 
tian, who was perhaps brought up as a heathen, 
and who has no prejudice nor association nor 
preference connected with the weekly Sabbath, 
or who is a more instructed Jew, and recog- 
nizes that the Jewish Sabbath is no longer 
binding, — let him not say to such an one, 
" You must keep this seventh day with me." 
" Why dost thou judge thy brother ? " cries the 
apostle : " He that regardeth not the day, to 
the Lord he doth not regard it." 

So things went on for a while. The Jewish 
Christians, many of them, keeping the weekly 
Sabbath, the Gentile Christians keeping it not. 
Meantime, every week the first day came right 
after the seventh ; and the associations of the 
first day grew, each week, more glad, more 
glorious, more holy. More and more it was 
felt to be a privilege to commemorate upon 
that day the sublime fact of the Lord's resur- 
rection. More and more it came to be the 
custom, both of Jewish Christians and of Gen- 
tile Christians, to meet for worship and for fel- 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 197 

lovvship upon that first day of the week. And 
thus it befell that presently the Jewish Chris- 
tians found that they were really observing in 
each week two holy days instead of one. It 
was inevitable that presently the sanctity of 
one of them must wane. Many of the early 
Christians were slaves ; almost all were poor 
men, working men. Two days out of a week 
could not be spared. It was an unnatural pro- 
portion. It wrought inconveniences of various 
sorts. In this busy world, not more than one- 
seventh of the time can be withdrawn for 
festivals, without disordering society. Easily 
enough, then, nay, inevitably, when the Jewish 
Christians were brought to the point, and 
forced to choose which of these two succes- 
sive days they would surrender, they gave up 
the Jewish day. They found that already the 
festival of the Lord's resurrection had so strong 
a hold upon them, that they could not bear to 
give that up. Besides, by this time the Jew- 
ish Christians, who at first were the most 
numerous, had begun to be outnumbered, and 
the Gentile Christians, with their broader, truer 
views, had gained deserved ascendency. 



198 The Sabbath Question. 

I could cite quotations, if there were time, 
and if it were needful, from the very earliest 
Christian writers after the apostolic age, to 
verify this historical assertion. Among these 
are Ignatius and Justin Martyr, 1 who lived so 
close to apostolic times that they might even 
have known the last of the apostles personally. 
A passage attributed to Ignatius (which, how- 
ever, is probably spurious) enjoins the keeping, 
both of Saturday and Sunday, but gives a 
marked preference to Sunday, as "the Lord's 
Day, as a festival, the queen and chief of all 
the days." But there is another version (con- 
fessedly authentic) of the same passage ; and in 
this the writer dissuades from the observance 
of the Sabbath, and urges a life " according to 
the Lord's ; " 2 the inference being, of course, 
that the practice of the church at that day was 
not settled and uniform. Some Christians kept 
the Sabbath; some observed the Lord's Day, 
and Ignatius was among the latter. And Justin 
says, that " Sunday is the day on which we all 

1 Ignatius died A.D. 107 ; Justin died A.D. 164. 

2 That is, "according to the Lord's life," as some interpret; or, 
as others interpret, "according to the Lord's Day." 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 199 

hold our common assembly," the chief reason 
for it being that on that day "Jesus Christ our 
Saviour rose from the dead." I cite these two 
writers simply as representing the spirit of the 
Christian church upon this point during the 
first centuries of its history. I need not multi- 
ply citations. 

There is not time to-day to prosecute the 
argument ; and, if to any one it seems as yet 
incomplete, I pray him to remember that it 
does not claim to be complete, and ask him to 
reserve his judgment till it shall be finished. 
Two things only at this point I beg him to con- 
sider. 

First, If it seems to him, as possibly it 
may seem to some, that the event which this 
first day of the week commemorates is scarcely 
so sublime or so important as to justify it in 
superseding the observance of the seventh day, 
let him look to it whether there is not some- 
thing wrong in his theology. It did not seem 
so to the apostles, nor to the first disciples 
whom they gathered. One difference between 
the apostolic age and ours is just here evident. 
To them the resurrection was of all the facts in 



2QO The Sabbath Question. 

Christian history the most illustrious. To some 
of us it is of no more than second-rate impor- 
tance. Is there not something wrong here ? 
Paul thought of Christ as of him "who died, 
yea, rather who is risen again." I have some- 
times feared that we were suffering from some 
disproportion in the order of our doctrines con- 
cerning the Lord Jesus Christ, and that the 
doctrinal significance which we attach to the 
sacrificial death of Jesus had been somehow 
allowed to overshadow and obscure the glorious 
meaning of his resurrection. Is it not possible 
to linger so long by the cross and by the sepul- 
chre as partly to deprive one's self of the glori- 
ous hopes and comforting assurances that attach 
themselves to the rising again from the dead ? 
May not our Christian faith have been too much 
in a dead Christ, or rather, not enough in a 
living Christ ? I have seen men stand at the 
sepulchre weeping, to whom I have longed to 
say, " He is not here : he is risen." These are 
grave considerations. But if it seems to us 
that the resurrection of the Lord is not of suffi- 
cient importance to justify the surrender of the 
seventh-day festival and the introduction of 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 201 

the first day in its place, let us find out whether 
our theology is not in need of some adjust- 
ment. This is the first point. 

Secondly, If there is any man to whom this 
first day of the week comes, not as a day of 
Christian privilege, but as a day of burdensome 
obligation, or as a day without significance, let 
him ask whether something more than his the- 
ology is not at fault, whether his religion is not 
a failure. If, when the day which celebrates 
the resurrection of the Lord returns, it brings 
no meaning to you or to me ; if, as it points 
backward to the sacred memories that cluster 
around the resurrection of the Lord, it stirs no 
thrill of gratitude in you and me ; if we do not 
spring responsive to its summons to give thanks 
to him "who died, yea rather, who is risen 
again," — then we may be sure that there is 
something wrong in us. Is it possible that 
Christ's resurrection is nothing to us ? But 
surely it ought to be something to us. It is the 
earnest of our own immortality, the promise of 
our own resurrection. And the same day which 
points backward to the one points forward to the 
other. But perhaps the thought of your own 



202 The Sabbath Question. 

resurrection, the assurance of your own immor- 
tality, has no attractiveness to you. Perhaps 
you give no heed to it, take no thought of it. 
Perhaps, even, it is an unwelcome thought to 
you, filling you, when it comes unsummoned, 
with gloomy doubts, harassing you with awful 
terrors. If this is so, men and brethren, if this 
is so with any of us, be sure that there is some- 
thing deeper than mere theological error in us ; 
that it is not merely intellectual ignorance and 
disorder that ails us ; that it is a disordered and 
corrupt heart. I charge you, therefore, breth- 
ren, to beware of such an evil heart of unbelief 
toward the Lord Jesus Christ, lest, a promise 
being left us of entering into his rest, of sharing 
his immortality, and knowing the power of his 
resurrection, any of us shall seem to come short 
of it. 1 

1 The custom of appealing to the Decalogue to sanction the ob- 
servance of the Lord's Day seems to have grown up within the 
Roman church, in an age not remarkable for enlightenment and 
intellectual vigor. The growth of this practice has been sketched 
with some detail by recent English writers, especially by Dr. Hessey 
(in his third lecture), and by Dr. Reichel (quoted by Cox, vol. ii. pp. 
380-384). It is not too much to say that the view of the fourth com- 
mandment which is taken in this and the following sermons, has the 
greatest and most authoritative names in church history upon its side. 



The Lord's Day a Privilege. 203 

To those of us who have been used to insist that the Decalogue is still 
obligatory, and the Mosaic Sabbath still in force, the writings, even of 
Luther and of Calvin, must seem loose and perilous ; while the whole 
catalogue of German scholars, almost without exception, the devout 
and evangelical as well as the rationalistic, give one unbroken testi- 
mony in the same direction. Not less emphatic is the opinion of the 
most accomplished English exegetes, like Alford ; and of men like 
Whately, and Thomas Arnold, and Frederick Robertson, and a host 
of others. Very significant, also, is the fact that devout scholars on 
the continent of Europe, recognizing the superior excellence of the 
Lord's Day as observed in America, are urging the introduction of our 
practice, while they continue to condemn our theory. 



204 The Sabbath Question. 



THE LORD'S DAY HONORABLE. 

" JFor if trjat rorjicrj is tionc afoag foas glorious, mucfj mote 
if) at fofftrf) remainctrj is glorious." — 2 Cor. iii. 11. 

IN the sermon which I preached a week ago, 
we passed from the discussion of the Jew- 
ish Sabbath to the examination of the Christian 
festival of the Lord's Day. I trust that it was 
made sufficiently evident, in the course of that 
sermon, that these two days are not the same, 
but different in many respects. Before we rest 
from this discussion, I desire to acknowledge, 
that in certain other respects there is important 
similarity between them also ; but the points of 
similarity and comparison will be better appre- 
ciated if the points of difference and contrast 
shall be first and fully recognized. 

It will be remembered that I frankly dis- 
claimed any wish to rest the observance of our 
Christian festival upon the fourth command- 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 205 

ment, and even that I was at some pains to 
show why that commandment could not prop- 
erly be quoted as applying to this observance : 
because it was a Jewish statute, not a Christian 
one ; because, however excellent and admira- 
ble, however august in its enactment and divine 
in its authority, it still was local, transient, par- 
tial, and has been superseded by the universal, 
permanent, and perfect spirit of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. I know that it will seem to some a 
shorter and easier way to call this Lord's Day 
the Sabbath day, and to invoke the sanction 
of the statute written on stone tables to sus- 
tain the observance of it. I know that this 
may even seem a stronger ground on which to 
rest the observance, because it has the thunders 
of the fiery mountain back of it, and because 
(I say it sorrowfully) the stone of Sinai some- 
times seems to our dull senses stronger and 
more divine than the unseen spirit of the New 
Testament. 

Brethren, I do not wish to take away one 
ray of glory from this law of Moses ; and I 
could not if I would. Sublime indeed with an 
august and awful glory is that mountain of the 



206 The Sabbath Question. 

law, burning with fire and hidden in the black- 
ness and darkness and tempest, and echoing 
with " the sound of the trumpet and the voice 
of words ; " terrible with a divine glory, that 
theophany at which Moses said, "I exceedingly 
fear and quake." Glorious indeed was the 
graven law on the stone tables given to be the 
constitution of the Jewish state. What earthly 
state had ever yet a constitution comparable for 
a single moment with it in glory? Glorious, 
too, with the high glory of an inspired wisdom 
were the laws and statutes written in conform- 
ity with this grand constitution ; glorious the 
institutions and the ordinances which grew up 
around and under it, — the ritual, the festivals, 
the holy places, and the holy seasons of the 
Jewish people. Glorious with a peculiar glory 
were the Jewish Sabbaths, weekly Sabbaths, 
monthly Sabbaths, Sabbaths of years, culmi- 
nating in the great semi-centennial Sabbath 
jubilee. All this was very glorious. I would 
not speak one word that should detract from it, 
that should, even in appearance, lessen it. I 
rather magnify and emphasize it ; knowing all 
the time, that from it, as from solid vantage 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 207 

ground, we shall rise so much the higher when 
we come to estimate the glory of the Christian 
church, the beauty of the city of the living God, 
the length and breadth and height of the New 
Jerusalem. " For if that which was done away 
is glorious, much more that which remaineth is 
glorious." 

For it is done away, — this glorious structure 
of the Jewish state, this sacred temple of the 
Jewish church. It is done away, — constitution 
graven on stone tables, statutes written upon 
venerable rolls, the temple, with its august 
ritual, the festivals, with all the glory of their 
memory and prophecy, the humane civil ordi- 
nances as to meat and drink and cleanliness, 
the holy days, the new moons, and the Sab- 
baths. The language of the great apostle, in 
the text and elsewhere, is most unequivocal 
upon this point. This was the very point on 
which the church at Corinth, to which he was 
writing, was plagued and imperilled at that very 
time. There had come to it certain teachers 
representing zealously the Jewish party in the 
Christian church, — that party of which I spoke 
a week ago as insisting upon the observance 



208 The Sabbath Question. 

of Jewish rites and ceremonies (such as the 
rite of circumcision), and of Jewish festivals, 
such as the weekly Sabbath. Not content with 
these observances for themselves, to whom, 
as Jews by birth and education, they were 
natural and valuable, they insisted that the 
Gentile churches, such as this one at Corinth, 
should be forced to keep them also ; which, 
when Paul denied, they went so far as even to 
dispute his apostolical authority, and challenged 
his doctrine as broad and dangerous, and his 
life as lax and disorderly. Against such charges 
and insinuations, the apostle, in his letter, ve- 
hemently defends himself ; and so, incidentally, 
has need to refer again and again to the rela- 
tion between the gospel and the law, between 
the new covenant and the old, between the 
ministration of Christ and the ministration of 
Moses. Both are glorious, he says ; but the 
glory of the new is infinitely the greater. He 
does not honor Moses less, but he adores Christ 
more. He does not undervalue or contemn the 
Jewish law ; but, when he puts it by the side of 
the glorious gospel of the Lord, it fades into 
invisibility by the comparison. Even the sa- 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 209 

cred constitution of the Jewish state and church 
is not excepted, " written and engraven in 
stones " (we know what portion of the law this 
was), even this was done away by being super- 
seded. You do not need a candle at high noon. 
You cannot see it if you have it. It has " no 
glory in this regard, by reason of the glory 
that excelleth." So with the Jewish law : you 
pay no fit honor to it when you insist that it is 
still in force, — nay, that it is in force more 
really and extensively than ever. Exaggerated 
honor is dishonor. The true way to reverence 
it is the apostle's way. Admit the glory of 
it, — partial, temporary, local. And then lift 
your eyes to see the glory of the New Testa- 
ment, the ministration of the Spirit. 

Approaching the subject thus fearlessly, but 
without the least irreverence, I hope to show in 
the particular case which I have taken in hand, 
how our Lord's Day has greater glory than the 
Jewish Sabbath. Only let us first complete 
and fortify the argument for its observance. 
For since the law written and engraven in 
stones, with all its glory, is done away, we 
have no right to rest the argument on the 



210 The Sabbath Question. 

commandment. And, since the living Spirit 
of the Lord prompts the observance, we have 
no need to rest- the argument on the command- 
ment, but appeal directly to the liberty of love. 
Does the love of Christ constrain us to it ? 
Does the love of God, the love of man, the 
love of our own souls, impel us to the volun- 
tary commemoration of this first day of the 
week ? Or dges this love find fit and useful 
expression in such a commemoration ? 

(i) The question is threefold. Does love 
to Christ constrain us ? The answer is not 
hard to find. I showed, a week ago, how natu- 
rally, how inevitably, from the very first, the 
earliest disciples marked the day of the Lord's 
resurrection, as week by week it came around. 
They could not help it. It would have been 
hard not to mark it. So profoundly had the 
risen Lord become endeared to them, so sub- 
limely had he proved his power and Godhead 
to them, so mysteriously near and present to 
them had he come to be, by rising from the 
dead, that, by an irresistible impulse, they met 
to speak of that great victory, and to worship 
the divine Victor on the first day of the week, 



The Lord } s Day Honorable, 2 1 1 

on which day he arose. At first the resurrec- 
tion reminded them of the day. But presently 
the day began to remind them of the resurrec- 
tion ; and they doubtless found a comfort in 
their trials, and an encouragement in their 
faith, as week by week this eloquent com- 
memoration was repeated. The lapse of time, 
the things of sense, must by and by have 
dimmed the memory and dulled the souls, even 
of men whose eyes had seen the Lord. For 
they were in the flesh and in the world, with 
fleshly hinderances to faith, with worldly liabil- 
ities to forgetfulness. For them, even though 
" with mortal eyes " they had " beheld : the 
Lord," it was sometimes hard to remember, 
it was often easy to forget. So, with a natu- 
ral instinct, they stretched out their hands of 
faith to grasp supports of any kind that would 
sustain and comfort. Such a support was the 
Lord's Day, speaking perpetually of his death, 
of his resurrection, of his coming again to 
raise them .also ; speaking perpetually, with 
the pathetic eloquence of memory, with the 
inspiring eloquence of prophecy, of him "that 
liveth and was dead, and, behold, he is alive 
forevermore ! " 



212 The Sabbath Question. 

So, to each successive generation of disciples 
did this weekly festival prove its own value and 
establish its own sanctity. It made them think 
of Christ, — of Christ, whom thus to think of 
is to love the more. For the working of this 
principle is the same in either way that we may 
take it. If we love him we must think of him. 
If we think of him we must love him. If we 
love him deeply it will help us to connect the 
thought of him with every thing, with every 
place, with every time. If we connect the 
thought of him with every thing, with every 
place, with every time, we shall love him the 
more deeply. The truth of this is obvious ; 
and the principle is one so natural, so irresist- 
ible, that we are acting upon it more or less 
unconsciously all the time. We even call it a 
law, the law of association ; only it is applied 
here in the most sacred and important of all 
applications. So that the law of association 
may properly be called a law of the Lord's Day. 
And no love that is real and intelligent will 
consent to disobey it. 

But at first, before the life and habits of the 
Christian church had come to be well defined 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 213 

and adjusted, there was some risk of carrying 
this law of association to an extreme and in- 
convenient application. At first the Christian 
disciples tried to make of every day a Lord's 
Day ; as indeed it ought to be, in some fit and 
proper sense : they would make of the week, 
and of the year, a commemoration of the earthly 
life of the Lord Jesus. It has been well said 
by Robertson of Brighton, 1 "they set, as it 
were, the clock of time to the epochs of his his- 
tory." Friday, for instance, brought to mind 
the day of his death. Saturday was the day of 
his entombment. Sunday was the day of his 
resurrection ; and so on, through the week and 
through the year. All this was well. It 
sprung from a devout thought and purpose. 
It is right for faith to catch at every thing by 
which to stay itself ; for memory to prop itself, 
for hope to lift itself, by all such means. Only 
there must presently come in other considera- 
tions, other influences, other necessities, to 
modify this practice. 

So, as a matter of fact, the observance of 
Friday grew more and more unimportant, grew 

1 Sermons, vol. ii. p. 203. 



214 The Sabbath Question. 

less and less strict and universal, though it 
lingers to this day among the most numerous 
sections of the Christian church ; the observ- 
ance of Saturday became obsolescent, and at 
last obsolete ; but the observance of Sunday 
has grown more and more important, more and 
more universal, more and more glorious as the 
church has endured. What is the reason of 
this fact ? 

The reason of it is partly this, — that the im- 
portance of the resurrection as the culminating 
fact in the earthly history of the Lord Jesus, 
as the last link in the chain of evidence which 
proved his Godhead, as the keystone of the 
arch of gospel promise, fitly gave the resurrec- 
tion day pre-eminence above the others. And 
it presently began to be discovered that a for- 
mal, general observance of them all as fasts or 
festivals would be impossible. To observe all 
days alike would answer very well, if all days 
alike would give the opportunity for rest from 
worldly occupation, and for fellowship and wor- 
ship. But this could not be. Some days must 
be employed in busy work from dawn till dusk, 
with toiling hand and anxious heart. It was 



The Lord \s Day Honorable. 2 1 5 

not every day that could be rescued for the spe- 
cial and peculiar uses of religion and of charity. 
It must be one of several days. The structure 
of the week as a natural and inherited division 
of time, pointed to one in seven as the true 
proportion between rest and labor. Probably 
this, also, is the proportion indicated by God in 
the nature and constitution of man. One day 
in seven has been tried for centuries, and has 
worked well. There are on record one or two 
experiments of peoples who have tried some 
other proportion. One day in ten was tried in 
France, but unsuccessfully. It is difficult for 
science, which in such a case must depend 
upon experiment for its facts, to speak with 
positive assertion on this point. But men with- 
out religious prejudices to impel them one way 
or another, have pronounced that the propor- 
tion between holidays and work-days, between 
rest and labor, is best met by the venerable 
Jewish custom of one in seven^ Less than 
that tends to drudgery and dulness and degra- 
dation, and so is inhuman. More than that 
tends to idleness and thriftlessness, and so is 
wasteful Of the first effect, examples are 



216 The Sabbath Question, 

abundant in all heathen lands, where the in- 
cessant round of toil, unbroken by a seventh 
day of rest and religious observance, grinds 
down to uniform debasement the faces of the 
poor. Of the second result, examples may be 
found, sufficiently significant, in certain Chris- 
tian lands where religious festivals have come 
to be so numerous and frequent, that, by reason 
of them, the orderly, industrious, and thrifty 
pursuit of business becomes well nigh impos- 
sible. Any one who has ever been in Rome, 
for instance, will remember how fatal to habits 
of industry and to successful business are the 
innumerable holidays which interrupt the week, 
and break into irregularity the order of the 
year. There are so many sacred days, so 
many rest-days, that the Lord's Day, properly 
so called, loses its value and sanctity, and the 
people waste their time in idleness and worse. 
Practically, then, we may even say that it 
seems to be partly proved by experiment that 
one day in seven taken from the care of busi- 
ness and from the drudgery of toil is good for 
men ; that less than this is not enough, and 
leaves them dull and tired ; and that more 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 217 

than this is too much, and makes them lazy 
and inert. 

But this proportion, justified apparently by 
practical experiment, was first suggested to us 
by the Jewish lawgiver. We owe it to the 
Hebrew church. And just in proportion as 
science proves it natural and necessary, just in 
that proportion do we get the fuller proof of 
the high inspiration by which Moses was di- 
rected. In choosing this proportion he was 
not led by accident, he was led by God. He 
found it hinted in the very order of God's own 
creation : six days of wise creative labor, and 
a seventh day of holy rest. God showed him 
this divine proportion, and he copied it ; and 
by copying it has made the world, which is 
adopting it, his debtor. 

This fact, then, helps to explain why it was 
that Friday and Saturday and the other days 
of the week presently lost their constant asso- 
ciation with particular incidents in the life of 
the Lord Jesus, while Sunday, the first day of 
the week, retained it. The observance of the 
other days with any formal celebration was im- 
possible for men who had to labor for their 



218 The Sabbath Question. 

daily bread. It deranged the true proportion 
between days of rest and days of work. If 
two days in seven had been possible, they 
would very likely have observed Friday as a 
general fast-day, and Sunday as a general 
feast-day. But since they were shut up by 
circumstances, and by nature even, to one day 
in seven, of course they chose to keep the 
first, the festival of the Lord's resurrection. 
Their love to him constrained them to employ 
the day as a reminder of his risen life, his 
constant presence. 

Not less, my friends, not less the love of 
Christ constraineth us. Do we remember him 
with so much diligence and constancy that we 
desire no aids to memory, no incentives to our 
diligence, no confirmation of our constancy ? 
When a friend beloved is taken from our side 
by death, with what instinctive eagerness do 
we treasure every association that will help to 
keep his memory fresh and green. This was 
his birthday, we remember, — this was the day 
he died. Here is his portrait, here the house 
in which he lived, here the green grave in 
which his body sleeps. , Our love and fealty to 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 219 

our friend suggest :: these reminiscences, con- 
strain us to these eloquent and powerful asso- 
ciations. Deliberately to put them by and 
forbid ourselves the use of them, seems to 
argue a willingness to forget, a waning of our 
love, a shallowness in our regret. 

Just so, because we love our Lord, we love 
the day that makes us think of him. Does any 
man reply with disavowal of his love to Christ, 
and say, " I do not profess to love the Lord, 
and therefore I do not love the day that makes 
me think of him." Strange as it seems, there 
are those who will make this disavowal and ex- 
cuse. But to such men the necessity of such 
a day as this is all the greater. You ought to 
love the Lord who loved you unto death, who 
loves you still with a pathetic agony of yearn- 
ing love ; you ought to love him, and you need 
to be reminded of him till you do. The value 
of the day to you is all the greater for the very 
reason which you urge' against it. There is a 
risen Lord, a living Lord, a loving Lord, who 
died for you, who lives for you, who is coming 
to you in judgment. You need to think of 
him. You must love him, for his love is draw- 



220 The Sabbath Question. 

ing you. Here is a day that naturally speaks 
of him. You ought to listen to it. It is 
fraught with clustering memories of him and 
of his love. You need to heed them. It is 
bright with thronging promises of him and of 
his power. You must not refuse them. 

Perhaps I have dwelt long enough upon 
this first division of my question. Does that 
love which is the spirit of the gospel prompt 
us to the observance of the first day of the 
week ? Does love to Christ constrain us to 
it ? Yes, I say. Love to him would prompt 
us, if we could, to link every day to him by 
some particular and potent association. But, 
if this cannot be done, then love to him con- 
strains us to link any day we can to him by 
such perpetual and potent law. Here is a day 
which we can so employ. The natural neces- 
sities of body and of mind permit, nay, even 
require, one day in seven for such use as this. 
And so the argument is perfect. " This is the 
day which the Lord hath made : we will rejoice 
and be glad in it." 

(2) But the love which is the spirit of the 
gospel burns broad as well as high ; reaches 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 221 

not only to the heavens, reaches also unto all 
the earth ; looks upward to the living Lord, 
looks outward to our fellow-men. Does love 
to man constrain us, then, to the observance 
of this festival of the Lord's Day ? 

It is not hard to answer. If our love to 
men constrains us to desire that they shall 
know and love the Lord who died for them, it 
must impel us to supply them with all useful 
means and opportunities to know and love 
him. This is a busy world. The cares of 
poverty are many and corroding. The deceit- 
fulness of riches is a very evil thing. Labor 
and anxiety and sorrow, trial and temptation 
and fatigue, well nigh to death, — these oc- 
cupy the time of men, absorb the thoughts of 
men, busy the hearts of men ; and Christ is 
shut out from the souls he came to save and 
sanctify, because there is no room for him to 
enter, because there is no moment when he can 
be heard. On the plain ground of expediency, 
then, we might safely rest the observance of 
one day in seven as a day of Christian oppor- 
tunity. Even if you did not need it for your- 
self, nor I for myself, it would be our duty, in 



222 The Sabbath Question. 

the absence of all reason to the contrary, to 
supply this opportunity to those who needed it 
for themselves. Putting it upon the very low- 
est ground, even, as a day of physical rest and 
recreation, it would be the dictate of a wise 
and Christian expediency to provide for its 
observance. And Christian expediency, when 
it is clearly recognized, comes to be Christian 
obligation ; just as, by the law of Christ, privi- 
lege is no way different from duty, nor duty 
different from privilege. I say, then, that the 
Lord's Day, as a day of Christian opportunity, 
is an expedient so wise, so useful, so success- 
ful, that the love to man which is inspired by 
Christ, which is the spirit of Christ, constrains 
us to the observance of it. Indeed, this seems 
to me so evident, that I need scarcely dwell 
upon it further. 

(3) But the love which we owe to our own 
souls constrains us to the same result. We are 
to love our neighbors as ourselves. For us too, 
as for all men, Christ has died. And, since our 
souls are precious in his sight, they must be 
precious in our own. I say, then, that you need 
this day, and that I need it. If you and I were 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 223 

wholly spiritual, then all time might be alike to 
us. But we are not wholly spiritual. We are 
not out of the body : we are in the flesh. We 
are tired, and we need to rest. We are thronged 
with earthly cares, and we need sometimes to 
lay them by. We are tempted to forgetfulness 
of Christ, and we need to be reminded of him. 
Taking the day upon the lowest ground, again, 
as an opportunity of physical and mental rest, 
we need it. Your physician will prescribe it 
for you as a necessary aid to bodily and mental 
health. But we need it even more, as an oppor- 
tunity for worship and fellowship, for "the 
assembling of ourselves together " for mutual 
helpfulness, for. the breaking of bread, for works 
of charity, for the joyful anticipation of our 
perfect rest. Each one of us is tired enough to 
value it. If we are not, we ought to be. It 
argues idleness and worthlessness on our part 
if we are not ready for this rest when it returns. 
Each one of us is tired enough, tempted enough, 
distracted enough, tied down to earth enough, 
to love the day which gives us opportunity for 
looking into heaven. When we cease to be 
tired and tempted and earthbound, it will be 



224 The Sabbath Question, 

soon enough to raise the question of dispensing 
with this opportunity ; when the days cease to 
be evil, it will be soon enough to neglect to re- 
deem this time. Till then we need it. Till 
then it is our privilege. Till then, therefore, 
the Spirit of our Lord, the love which is the 
law and power of his kingdom, will constrain 
us to its observance. Till then it will help to 
make his presence real to us, his life, his death, 
his resurrection real. 

Resting here the argument for the observ- 
ance of the Lord's Day upon such various, and 
I presume to say such firm and solid, bases, I 
have left myself but little space to indicate in 
what respects the glory of this Christian festival 
is greater than the glory of the Jewish. Cer- 
tain points of similarity between the two, as 
well as certain points of contrast, have inciden- 
tally appeared in the progress of the discussion. 
They are not the same. The one was on the 
seventh day of the week. The other is on the 
first day of the week. The one had for its 
occasion a conspicuous incident in the history 
of a nation. The other has for its occasion the 
central fact in the history of mankind. The 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 225 

one was a monumental day to mark the emanci- 
pation of a race of slaves. The other is a mon- 
umental day that marks the rescue of a world 
of sinners. The one rests on a stern com- 
mandment, graven on stone tables, given with 
terrific and almost intolerable majesty of visible 
sight and audible sound. The other rests upon 
the free spirit of a willing and loving disciple- 
ship, a spirit unwritten, invisible, the living, 
loving Spirit of the living Lord himself. The 
one is local. The other is fast coming to be 
universal. 

So much by way of contrast. But there is 
comparison as well. Both days were festivals. 
The Jewish Sabbath, as I took pains to show in 
the third of these discourses, was not by any 
means a bondage. It was a privilege, a glad 
day, the poor man's day, the slave's day. So is 
our Christian festival a privilege, a glad day, a 
day for toil to cease, a day for recreation and 
rejoicing, a day for the poor in spirit, for the 
meek and lowly. Both have been subjected to 
the same abuse, — have been twisted into bur- 
densome yokes, — have been made a toil in- 
stead of a repose. Both days are Sabbath days 



226 The Sabbath Question. 

in some lower usage of the word, but neither is 
the real and perfect Sabbath. That is eternal 
in the heavens. Both days are days of memory. 
Both speak of slavery, — one of the slavery of 
Egypt, the other of the slavery of sin. Both 
speak of rescue from slavery, — one of the 
rescue wrought by God through Moses, the 
other of the rescue wrought by God in Christ. 
Both days preach lessons of humility : one 
spoke to Israel of their low estate, and bade 
them never to forget that they were slaves, 
helpless and hopeless, till God rescued them ; 
the other speaks to all men of their lost con- 
dition, and bids them never to forget that they 
were dead in trespasses and sins, helpless and 
hopeless, till Christ died for them. Both days 
are days of prophecy and promise. Both are 
days of rest, and speak of higher and more 
perfect rest. Both days are gilded with the 
brightness of a coming glory, growing brighter 
as it comes the nearer. The one, "illusively" 
leading the expectations of the restless people 
on from Moses to Joshua, from Joshua to David, 
from David to the Son of David ; the other, 
leading the expectations of the waiting world 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 227 

onward and upward through the rolling ages, 
and above the changing earth, to Him who all 
the while is coming again in the power of his 
own resurrection. The first day prophesied the 
second, and the second typifies the last. Both 
days are glorious with the glory which streams 
in from the invisible ; but just as of two moun- 
tain peaks, the highest one will catch the grand- 
est splendor of the sunlight and hold it longest : 
so of these, the Christian festival has glory so 
excelling, that, by comparison with it, the other 
is not glorified. Both days are temporary and 
transient, for "they reckon not by years and 
days" within the veil. One of them is done 
away already. The other yet remains. And 
if that which is done away was glorious, much 
more that which remaineth is glorious. 

Chiefly in these three respects it has pre-em- 
inent glory beyond that of the Jewish Sabbath. 
I need only point them out in closing, for I 
have dwelt upon them already by anticipation ; 
and I leave every man to ponder them in his 
own thoughts. 

This first. The Christian festival is a free 
day. Its service is a willing service. It rests 



228 The Sabbath Question. 

upon no stony statute. It is the spontaneous, 
unforced act of loving discipleship. And its 
glory in this regard is so much greater than the 
glory of the Jewish day, as the liberty of love is 
greater than the bondage of the law ; as the 
ministration of the Spirit is more glorious than 
the ministration of the letter. 
/ And this day, secondly, is more glorious than 
the other by reason of its universality. That 
was local — for one nation. This is fast becom- 
ing universal. Already it is accepted as a wel- 
come privilege by Christian nations many and 
populous. And whenever in his stately goings, 
the Lord Christ comes in the knowledge of his 
gospel to new nations and new lands, on distant 
continents or in the islands of the sea, he brings 
this privilege with him, — imposing it on none, 
permitting it to all. And so, by an increasing 
multitude which no man can number, it is com- 
ing to be valued and observed ; and weary sons 
of toil look up from the long bondage of unre- 
mitted drudgery, and give thanks for the day 
which gives them liberty and rest ; and souls 
long-laboring and heavy laden with the tiresome 
yoke of sin rejoice to celebrate the day which 



The Lord's Day Honorable. 229 

promises a rest remaining for the people of 
God. So that soon, as year by year the king- 
dom of our Lord advances, there shall be no 
land or nation, no kindred or people, where this 
day shall not commemorate the resurrection of 
the Lord, and prophesy the rest which, in the 
power of his resurrection, he is giving and shall 
give to men. f7T~ 

And this suggests the third respect in which 
the glory of this day is greater than the glory 
of the Jewish day, — its increased spirituality. 
The Jewish day, indeed, pointed to heaven and 
to God, but pointed indirectly and remotely, 
pointed through types and shadows and inter- 
vening clouds. It spoke of heaven ; but it spoke 
of Moses first, of Joshua, of David, and through 
them of heaven. But this day points directly 
upward, through no media, but straight into the 
opening heaven, to Christ who died, yea rather, 
who is risen again, and who is coming in his 
risen power to give us rest with him, to give us 
rest in him. We know where our rest. is. We 
know how our rest is. We look to him. And 
this day speaks to us directly, potently of him. 

To-day, then, brethren, if ye will hear his 



230 The Sabbath Question. 

voice, harden not your hearts ; and see that ye 
refuse not him that speaketh — that speaketh 
on his holy day and by it. For by as much as 
our heavenly Jerusalem is more glorious than 
the awful mount that burned with fire, by so 
much is the eloquence and pathos of this day 
more mighty than the teaching of the Jewish 
Sabbath. Let there not be, my brethren, let 
there not be in us, in any one of us, an evil 
heart of unbelief, lest, a promise being left us 
of entering into rest, of sharing in the glory of 
Christ's resurrection, any of us should seem to 
come short of it 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 231 



VI. 



THE RIGHT OBSERVANCE OF THE 
LORD'S DAY. 

" ILet eberg man be fullg pcrsitatoti in ijis obm mintJ." 
Rom. xiv. 5. 

IT may have seemed to some, as they have 
listened to the sermons in which, during the 
last few weeks, I have discussed the relation of 
the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian festival 
of the Lord's Day, and the relation of both of 
these rest-days to the eternal Sabbath of the liv- 
ing God, — it may have seemed to some, I say, 
that the tendency of the argument was rather 
to unsettle the minds of men, — and that, too, 
upon a most important and practical matter, — 
than to persuade them fully concerning their 
own personal duty. To such persons it seems 
a grievous evil that the minds of men should 
be unsettled on so grave a subject. No doubt 
it is. And no doubt the apostle Paul would 



232 The Sabbath Question. 

so regard it ; since we here find him, speaking 
on this very point, deprecating any such unset- 
tlement of conviction, and urging, " Let every 
man be fully persuaded in his own mind." 
The word used is a very strong and emphatic 
one. The meaning is, that every man should 
carefully and clearly settle the question of duty 
in his own convictions. Let him be fully per- 
suaded, and let him be fully persuaded in his 
own mind. 

It is not difficult to see where the danger is 
if questions of this sort are left unsettled. 
The apostle himself indicates it a little far- 
ther on. Scruples of conscience can never be 
disregarded safely ; and, therefore, scruples of 
conscience ought not to be unnecessarily multi- 
plied. To think that a thing is wrong is to 
make it wrong to him who thinks so. " He 
that doubteth," says the apostle, with regard 
to the vexed question of meats offered to idols, 
" He that doubteth is damned if he eat." To 
eat is not wrong : to refrain from eating is not 
wrong. But to eat when one thinks he ought 
not to eat is wrong : to refrain from eating 
when one thinks he ought to eat is wrong. 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 233 

The spirit with which the thing is done is what 
gives it its character. It is the conscience of 
the man that must be kept void of offence. If 
it be an ignorant or mistaken conscience, still 
it is conscience, and must not be wounded. If 
the light it gives is broken and imperfect light, 
it must still be followed. It is to be enlight- 
ened~by all possible means, cleansed, strength- 
ened, instructed, — certainly ; but meantime 
it is to be followed, what there is of it, and 
used as best it may be. To act in opposition 
to it, or in disregard of it, is to incur spiritual 
injury and damage of a very serious sort. 

This is the position which the apostle takes, 
and it commands assent the moment it is stated. 
All men agree that a man must act according 
to the light he has ; and, if he does so, we hold 
him blameless. Walking in the twilight, I may 
see what seems to be a dangerous pit : if it 
so seems to me by this twilight, according to 
the best judgment I can form, of course I must 
keep clear of it. Returning by and by, at 
noonday, I discover that it is not a perilous 
pit at all, but a harmless shadow. Now I am 
not bound to keep clear of it, but pass directly 



234 The Sabbath Question. 

over it. So conscience may bind me to do one 
thing to-day ; but to-morrow, being better in- 
structed, it may bind me to do the opposite 
thing. Or my conscience may bind me to one 
course, and your conscience, being differently 
instructed, may bind you to the opposite course. 
And so we may have, and often do have, the 
spectacle of two equally good men, equally con- 
scientious men, doing two diverse and even 
directly antagonistic acts. In such a case the 
danger is (first), that they will judge one an- 
other by the light each one of his own con- 
science ; whereas that is sufficient only for the 
judgment of one's self, and not for the judg- 
ment of one's neighbor : or else (secondly), 
that they will disregard each one his own con- 
science, and adopt each one his neighbor's. 
The danger is twofold. Let me state it again 
still more simply. I may impose my con- 
science on my neighbor, and say, " What is 
wrong for me is wrong for you," and therefore 
condemn him. Or I may adopt his conscience 
for myself, and say, " What is right for you is 
right for me," and therefore follow him, to 
the damage of my own soul. In either case I 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 235 

greatly err. For I forget that each man's con- 
science is his own, and no one's else. It binds 
no one but him. But him it does bind. 

Hence the importance of settling questions 
of duty clearly, firmly, intelligently, — not by 
force, but by persuasion ; and not for other 
people, not for everybody once for all, but each 
one for himself, every man in his own mind. 
Unless this be done, this double danger of 
judging our brother, on the one hand, and of 
being made to offend by our brother, on the 
other hand, is very present and very constant. 
When a man is fully persuaded in his own 
mind concerning his own duty he will be safe 
against both perils. He will respect the con- 
science of other men because he respects his 
own ; and, if they differ with him, he will 
neither judge them nor be judged by them. 
But if he has no firm convictions of his own, 
he will suffer constant damage. He is queru- 
lous on the one hand, and timorous on the other. 
He does a thing, and presently chides himself 
for fear that it was wrong, and so begins to 
abstain from doing it. Or he abstains from a 
thing, and presently grumbles because he sees 



236 The Sabbath Question. 

other people doing it with no sense of wrong, 
and so begins to do it himself. " I don't know 
that it is right," he says, and yet he does it ; 
and so his conscience worries him, and ought to 
worry him. " I don't know that it is wrong," 
he says ; and yet he does not do it, and so he 
is chafed and fretted with his bondage. Either 
way he has no liberty, no peace ; and the only 
way for him to secure liberty and peace and 
safety is to follow the counsel of the apostle 
in this text, " Let every man be fully persuaded 
in his own mind." Let him be settled in his 
convictions. 

But some things never can be settled till 
they are settled right. To settle a question of 
conscience by force, for instance, — by external 
pressure of command and authority, — is no way 
to settle it. Settle it that way, and, as soon as 
the pressure of outside force is taken off, it will 
present itself again. It is to be settled, not 
violently, but intelligently ; not by an appeal to 
arbitrary statutes, but by an appeal to eternal 
principles ; not by referring it to the letter 
which killeth, but to the spirit which giveth 
life. Let a man be persuaded in his own mind. 



Right Observance vf the Lord's Day. 237 

Let him see the reason of the thing. Let 
him see on what unchanging principles it rests. 
Let it be settled by intelligent persuasion, 
not by unreasoning compulsion. Then it will 
stand. 

And " every man in his own mind." Let 
the settlement be a personal one. Let me re- 
member that I am deciding for myself, and not 
for my neighbor ; and that he is deciding for 
himself, and not for me. " Every one of us 
shall give account of himself to God," — of 
himself, not of his neighbor. Each before his 
Judge, in the court of his own conscience, 
stands or falls. It will be a great comfort to 
us if we bear this fact in mind. It will save 
us a great deal of worry and care. We need 
not decide questions of duty for other people. 
We cannot decide them for other people. 
Some people think that this is what a minis- 
ter is for, to decide questions of casuistry for 
his congregation. I always refuse to do it. 
Every one in his own mind, and for himself, 
must settle them. Principles are the same, 
always, and to all ; but how to apply principles 
each man must determine for himself. I can 



238 The Sabbath Question. 

give advice, experience, sympathy, help ; but, 
in the end, I cannot take off from any man's 
conscience its own personal responsibility. To 
fetter him in his own determinations is spiritual 
tyranny of the most intolerable sort. To in- 
flict it is a cruel wrong. And good men have 
gone to the stake and the gallows rather than 
submit to it. 

Having now drawn out the meaning of the 
text, I wish to apply it to the question which 
we have had under discussion. It almost ap- 
plies itself sufficiently. Depend upon it, this 
Sabbath question never will be settled till it is 
settled right ; never will cease to be a perplex- 
ing question till the argument for it is based, 
as I have tried to base it, on right principles ; 
never will cease to be a painful question, caus- 
ing censoriousness on one side and offence on 
the other, till it is recognized as being a matter, 
not for general and obligatory commandment, 
but for the individual conscience. And if the 
argument which I have been conducting has 
tended to unsettle anybody's mind, I justify 
myself by saying that it has been with the 
hope and purpose that thereby such a person's 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 239 

mind might be settled right again, and settled 
permanently, in Christian faith and Christian 
charity. 

That most thoughtful and Christian preacher 
whom I have had occasion to quote already, 
once or twice, in the course of this discussion, 
Robertson of Brighton, has pointed out the 
fact l that hardened criminals have sometimes 
traced their career in crime to the breaking of 
the Sabbath day as its first step. But, as he 
observes with fine discernment, the inference 
which we sometimes draw from such a confes- 
sion is unwarranted. We sometimes infer, that, 
because the criminal confesses that his break- 
ing of the Sabbath was a sin to him, therefore 
it must be sin to every one and everywhere. 
Whereas, this does not follow. It only fol- 
lows that the criminal wounded his own con- 
science. He did a thing which he thought 
was wrong. To him, therefore, it was wrong. 
Whether it is wrong to other people or not, is 
still an open question. 

So, I dare say, many of us have, at one 
time or another, sinned in the same way. If 

1 Sermons, vol. ii. p. 210. 



240 The Sabbath Question. 

we regard the Jewish law of the Sabbath as 
still in force, then we are bound to obey it, 
and to obey the whole of it. If we are full}, 
persuaded in our own minds that the fourth 
commandment is a statute for us, then dis- 
obedience to the fourth commandment is for 
us a grievous sin. And yet I doubt if there 
is one of us who keeps that fourth command- 
ment : it designates the seventh day ; have 
we never had scruples concerning the seventh 
day ? Have we ever fully persuaded our own 
minds concerning the twist by which this law 
is made applicable to the first day ? Have we 
not sometimes doubted whether we were not 
bound to fall in with the Seventh-day Baptist 
sect in their observance of Saturday ? And 
doubting thus, but not regarding our doubts, 
have we not damaged our consciences ? 

Or, if no one pleads guilty on this point, let 
us look still farther. " In it thou shalt not do 
any work," — this is the language of the com- 
mand, — " in it thou shalt not do any work, 
thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy 
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, 
nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." Do 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 241 

we obey this law ? It is a strict law ; it is a 
plain law ; it is easy to understand it ; it is hard 
to evade it. "Not any work." Do you do no 
work on Sunday ? I do not ask whether you 
do less work than on week-days. I ask whether 
you do no work. Do you never write a letter ? 
Do you never busy your brain with cares of 
business ? Do you never work with hand or 
foot ? Carry the question farther still. Does 
your man-servant or your maid-servant not do 
any work on Sunday except what is dictated 
by mercy or necessity ? Do you never stretch 
those words "mercy and necessity" to cover 
somewhat multitudinous exceptions ? Carry the 
question farther still. Do your cattle do no 
work on Sunday ? Do you make no use of 
your horses except what necessity or mercy 
dictates ? Brethren, I do not believe that any 
one of us, tried by the standard of this Jewish 
law, could plead not guilty. We allow ourselves 
in things which we believe that it condemns. 

What then ? Do I say that no man must use 
his horse on Sunday ; that no man must suffer 
food to be cooked in his house on Sunday ; that 
no man may walk on Sunday except as mercy 



242 The Sabbath Question. 

or necessity requires ; that no man may put 
forth his hand or employ his brain in work, for 
recreation, for example, or for expediency of 
any sort, — do I say this ? No : because I do 
not hold the fourth commandment as obligatory. 
If I did, I should say this. If you do, you are 
bound to do this. And if you recognize your 
obligation to do this, and do it not, you wound 
your conscience and do damage to your soul. 
And here is the point. Our theory concerning 
the Lord's Day is in conflict with our practice. 
Our theory concerning it is, that the law of the 
Jewish Sabbath applies to it. Our practice is 
to use it with more or less of Christian liberty. 
What shall we do, then ? Our Christian in- 
stincts urge us to liberty. Our Jewish tradi- 
tions entangle us with a yoke of bondage. The 
spirit seems to justify our freedom. The letter 
seems to condemn it. Our practice does not 
seem to us wrong, when we look into the Gos- 
pels and the epistles. But it does not seem to 
us right, when we look into the books of Ex- 
odus and Deuteronomy. We condemn our- 
selves in that which we allow. We eat, but 
doubt. And the wear and tear of conscience 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 243 

in the process is serious and perilous. What 
shall we do, then ? Manifestly, this is the first 
thing to be done : " Let every man be fully 
persuaded in his own mind." Take the ques- 
tion up fearlessly and honestly. Find out which 
is right, our theory or our practice. Settle the 
point. 

But how settle it ? Suppose we cannot set- 
tle it. Suppose, when all the light possible has 
been gained by study, people's minds will dis- 
agree. Suppose, when all is done, the practice 
of the Christian world is still not uniform. 
Suppose it to be true of us, as it was of the 
church at Rome in Paul's day, that " one man 
esteemeth one day above another ; another 
esteemeth every day alike. " What then ? 

The case is not a hypothetical one with us. 
It is a very real, a very important, a very em- 
barrassing one. We of New England, our 
fathers who are buried there, and we who turn 
with loving hearts and reverent memory thither, 
as to the source and fount of what is best and 
truest in the nation, — our fathers and ourselves 
(with some eminent exceptions) have been 
accustomed to regard the Lord's Day as com- 



244 The Sabbath Question. 

manded by the Jewish law, and to quote that 
law as the authority for its observance. On 
the other hand, good men in Germany and else- 
where, devout and learned men, have been 
accustomed to regard the Jewish law as super- 
seded, and to observe the Lord's Day upon 
different grounds and in a very different way. 
Within a few years past the steady stream of 
immigration has made European views and 
practices concerning this matter exceedingly 
familiar to us. The increased facilities of inter- 
course between nations have operated to bring 
us together, to show us one another's usages, 
and to put them in frequent and distinct con- 
trast. The Lord's Day in New England — I 
instance New England as representative of 
what is best in the American churches — is a 
very different thing from the Lord's Day in 
Berlin, or even from the Lord's Day in Chicago, 
or even from the Lord's Day in New York and 
in Newark. In these last cities the American 
Sunday and the European Sunday are put side 
by side. We see the difference between them. 
We mark how each is modifying the other. 
We begin to fear lest the nation shall come to 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 245 

esteem every day alike ; and not every day 
alike holy, but every day alike profane. And 
we shrink from the surrender of any voice of 
authority, of any force of law, which arrests or 
discourages such profanation. Already, we say, 
the tendency in what seems to us the wrong 
direction is strong enough and far too strong. 
Let us make our laws stricter. Let us hold 
more rigid theories than ever. Let us be more 
scrupulous in our observance than before. Let 
us denounce these foreign customs. Let us 
put upon them the stigma of our condemnation. 
Let us judge our brethren. Let us treat their 
customs with opprobrium and obloquy. Let us 
make them feel the strong restraint and penalty 
of civil law. At any rate, let us not, at such a 
time as this, give up the useful terrors of the 
Jewish commandment. Let us not weaken our 
case by untimely concessions. Let us even do 
a little evil, and defend our practice with a false 
sanction, in order that so great a good as the 
preservation of our Puritan Sabbath may come. 
The temptation to do this is very strong and 
very plausible. But I do not think that the 
apostle Paul would have yielded to it. I do 



246 The Sabbath Question. 

not think he would have given such advice as 
this. I think that he would say, as in the text 
he has said, " Let every man be fully persuaded 
in his own mind." There is a right way and a 
wrong way to deal with this case. The wrong 
way is to deal with it by force. The right way 
is to deal with it by conscience, respecting the 
liberty of conscience on the one hand, respect- 
ing the weakness of conscience on the other. 
I have very strong views on the question of 
comparison between the European Sabbath and 
the American Sabbath. I very greatly prefer 
our methods of employing and observing the 
day. I strongly deprecate the tendency to 
make of it a day of mere amusement, of animal 
enjoyment, of junketing and riot. But I would 
resist this tendency by fully persuading the 
minds of men that our way is the better way, 
and that it is demanded by the highest and 
most intelligent interpretation of the law of 
liberty, the law of love, the law of Christ. If I 
cannot do it thus, I do not want to do it at all. 

Broadly stated, this is the difference between 
the European Sabbath and the American Sab- 
bath. With us the day is a religious day exclu- 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 247 

sively. It is a day restricted to the uses of 
Christian worship and of Christian fellowship. 
Public amusements are discountenanced and 
forbidden. People are expected to spend their 
time at their own homes or in their places of 
worship, and in religious occupations. On the 
continent of Europe, and where European cus- 
toms have been introduced among us, it is very 
different. People go to church in the morning, 
— that is to say, some of them do, not all of 
them, — but, after that, the day is given up to 
mere amusement. Great dinners are given. 
It is the day for public and official banquets. 
The avenues and parks are crowded with people 
walking and riding. It is the great day for 
military parades and public spectacles of every 
sort ; for horse-races and things of that sort. 
In the evening all the places of amusement 
put forth their most attractive programmes, and 
are thronged with people. And of course, 
more or less generally, shops are open and 
workmen busy in supplying the wants of this 
great multitude of pleasure-seekers. It is a 
bright, merry, popular day, but not especially a 
devout or a religious day. 



248 The Sabbath Question. 

Between these two methods of observance I 
do not hesitate for a moment. Who that recalls 
the sacred stillness of a New England Sabbath, 
— from the moment when the church-bells fill 
the morning air with music, till the peace of 
evening settles down upon the deeper peace of 
holy fellowship with God, for which the day 
has given opportunity, — who that recalls the 
sanctity of the day as our fathers kept it, 
the resistless eloquence with which it spoke, 
even to the heedless and reluctant, of another 
world than this, a pure and holy world, a spir- 
itual world, — the solemn sweetness with which 
it touched all souls, reminding them of one who 
died for all that all might live, of one who rose 
again that by the power of his resurrection we 
might be glorified, — who, I say, remembering 
this, will not say that our observance of the 
Lord's Day (or let us rather say our fathers' 
observance of the Lord's Day) as a spiritual 
day, was far better than the French observance 
of it, or the German observance of it, or the 
Roman observance of it as a day for sensuous 
and animal enjoyment? By as much as spirit 
js better than matter, by as much as soul is 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 249 

nobler than body, by as much as eternity is 
loftier than time, by so much is it better. So 
it seems to me. 

Doubtless, our fathers' observance of the day 
was often overscrupulous, often legal and 
severe, often uncharitable even, in its intoler- 
ance. Doubtless it was defended by poor argu- 
ments ; doubtless it was enforced with zeal 
which was not according to knowledge. But 
they were fully persuaded in their own minds, 
and they acted on their convictions with an 
heroic fidelity. They were spiritually-minded 
men, although sometimes severe in word and 
strict in deed. If we can improve upon the 
practice of our fathers in any particular, we 
are bound to do it. But it will be a good while 
before we improve upon the religiousness and 
devoutness of their spirit. So too, if in these 
respects we can learn any lessons, even from 
the Germans, whose observance of the day we 
on the whole disapprove, we are bound to do it. 
And if we can teach them any lessons, if we 
can show them any more excellent way, if we 
can share with them any inheritance of Chris- 
tian method which is better than their own, as 



250 The Sabbath Question. 

I surely think we can, then we are bound to do 
that also. 

And it seems to me (I say these things in 
the way of suggestion merely, and not at all 
in the spirit of authority), it seems to me that 
the same motives which impel us to the observ- 
ance of the day at all, should impel us to the 
observance of it in a spiritual way, in a devout 
and religious way, in a Puritan way if you 
please to say so, rather than in the European 
way of secular amusement and animal recre- 
ation. What those motives were I need only 
remind you, since I dwelt at length upon them 
in the last discourse. 

I said that love to Christ, whose resurrec- 
tion from the dead this day celebrates, impels 
us to commemorate it. Because we love him, 
we love the day that reminds us of him. Be- 
cause we love him, also, we shall so use the 
day that it shall best remind us of him. How 
shall it best remind us of him ? By giving up 
its time to sport and merriment, by strollings 
in the streets, and gossipings in public places ; 
by spectacles of worldly gayety, by noisy music, 
by sensuous eating and drinking, by theatres 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 251 

and concerts, by idleness and sloth ? I think 
not, verily. By meditation on his truth, by 
communion with his saints, by worship in pri- 
vate and in public, by prayer for his Spirit, 
by praise for his redemption, — in such ways 
as these we shall be best reminded of him, in 
such ways as these we shall get nearest to 
him. And if opportunity is given us to speak 
of him to others, or to do in his name works 
of charity and brotherly kindness, in such ways 
we shall get still nearer to him, shall be in 
even sweeter fellowship with him. Gather 
your little ones about you, if God has given 
you little ones to train for him ; gather them 
about you. Let the day become a very wel- 
come day, a very happy day, to them ; because, 
more than any other day, it is a household day, 
because the loving ties of natural affection 
find more full and beautiful expression than 
on other days. Let the thought of Christ be 
the deep undertone which charms and hallows 
all the day, and which is heard more full, more 
deep, more resonant with eternal music, in 
the Sunday stillness than when driving cares 
and roaring businesses and jarring discords of 



252 The Sabbath Question. 

traffic, and passionate excitements of gain and 
loss, fill up the week. Take time to-day to 
think of Christ, to learn of Christ, to tell your 
little ones of Christ, to teach Christ to those 
who do not know him, to open the door of your 
house to Christ, and let him come and make 
your home a holy place, to open the door of 
your heart to Christ, and let him enter in and 
sup with you, and you with him. 

Then, secondly, the way in which you keep 
this day must be determined by the love you 
bear your neighbor. Who is your neighbor ? 
Well, for example, your man-servant and your 
maid-servant are your neighbors. The man 
who takes care of your horses is your neigh- 
bor. The woman who prepares your dinner 
is your neighbor. You are bound by the law 
of love to be considerate toward them, and to 
secure them in their enjoyment of their day 
of rest, and to give them the opportunity to 
think of Christ, to learn of Christ, to worship 
Christ. Because this day is a festival, we 
might properly enough celebrate some part 
of it with feasting and with " pious mirth," if 
it were not for this consideration. It was not 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 253 

^hat the day might be a fast-day that Moses 
commanded not to kindle fire nor to cook food 
upon the Sabbath : it was " that thy manserv- 
ant and thy maidservant may rest as well as 
thou." So, too, it is not that the day is any 
way a sorrowful or gloomy day to us, that we 
content ourselves without festivities, which 
otherwise we might enjoy ; but it is simply 
that our man-servant and maid-servant may 
have rest as well as we. It is not on the 
letter of the Jewish law that we ground any 
obligation of this sort. Indeed, we do not 
speak of it as obligation anyway, and have 
no right to lay down strict, unbending laws 
upon such matters. Circumstances alter cases. 
Something, for example, depends upon the will- 
ingness, upon the Christian liberty and love, 
even of our man-servant and our maid-servant, 
as to what service we may expect from them. 
And it is to the spirit of Christian liberty and 
love, and to that only, that we can make appeal. 
Only, " let every man be fully persuaded in his 
own mind." 

Then, lastly, love to our own souls suggests 
what I have called the spiritual method of em- 



254 The Sabbath Question. 

ploying the Lord's Day, in preference to the 
simply sensuous way of using it. Bodily rest, 
indeed, we need. Let no man think that he 
can do without it. If he is forced by higher 
duties to deprive himself of it on Sunday, as 
a minister is, then he is bound to take it on 
Saturday or on Monday. And I may quote 
the fourth commandment as obliging me to 
observe Monday as a rest-day with just as 
much emphasis, and no more than that with 
which you quote it for the observance of Sun- 
day. Make this Lord's Day a day of rest to 
your bodies and your minds. Do not merely 
change your employments of the week for dif- 
ferent but not less wearisome employments 
on this first day. The cases are exceptional 
which will justify you in doing so. Rest ! It 
is a privilege, it is therefore a duty. It is 
especially a duty in this restless age and in 
this restless land. Do not think you are sin- 
ning if you sleep. You are sinning if you 
think so, but you need not think so. Refresh 
your body in such ways as seem to you best, 
considering as well the rights and the neces- 
sities of your neighbor as your own. Make 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 255 

the day a welcome day, a free day, a happy 
day, a day of privilege. Count it no sin to 
worship God through the enjoyment of his 
works in nature, beneath the temple of the 
groves, if so you choose, or among the lilies 
of the field, breathing his pure air, rejoicing in 
his blessed light, listening to the birds that 
sing his glory, and that sing because he works 
to give them life and tune their songs, — count 
this no sin, if it is needful to you, if it is help- 
ful to you, if there are no higher duties to 
yourself or to your neighbors, which forbid it. 
But especially, and more than all, employ the 
day for spiritual rest, with thoughts of Christ, 
with meditation on the truth of Christ, with 
the communion of the saints of Christ, with 
worship in your home and in the church of 
Christ, " not forsaking the assembling of our- 
selves together, as the manner of some is ; but 
exhorting one another ; and so much the more 
as ye see the day approaching." 

" So much the more as ye see the day ap- 
proaching." What day ? The day of the 
Lord. What day of the Lord ? The day of 
his eternal Sabbath ; the day of which this 



256 The Sabbath Question. 

first day of the week is the perpetual promise 
and dawning ; the day of God's rest ; the day 
of the rest that remaineth for the people of 
God. For it is approaching. The first beams 
of it are gilding earth and heaven even now. 
It is not a day of hours and minutes. It is 
eternal. It is not a day that comes and goes. 
It " remaineth." It is not a day upon which 
there comes down the darkness of the nisrht. 
"There is no night there." It is not a day 
upon which there comes in the turmoil and 
distraction, the temptation and the evil, of the 
week. " There shall in no wise enter into it 
any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever 
worketh abomination, or maketh a lie." This 
is the Sabbath day. This is the day which is 
approaching. It " cometh, and now is," in 
souls that love the Lord and know his peace 
and share his righteousness. And it shall 
shine more and more throughout eternal ages. 

Into the likeness of this spiritual day should 
all our days be fashioned ; for the blessedness 
of -this eternal state should all our time be re- 
deemed. If it were possible ; but is it pos- 
sible ? For now, as when Paul wrote and 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 257 

labored, " the days are evil." Toil and trouble, 
traffic and speculation* the cares of this world, 
and the deceitfulness of riches, choke them 
and defile therm If, then, one day among the 
seven, as the weeks roll by, can be rescued 
from absorbing care and from deceitful busi- 
ness, and sanctified to the peculiar uses of 
religion and of charity, in God's name, and in 
the name of suffering and sinful men, let it be 
done. If there can be one day secured for 
rest and recreation to the weary sons of toil) 
one day for worship and religious thought 
and teachings one day that shall prefigure and 
present by prophecy, and even by foretaste, 
the eternal blessedness of heaven, so let it be ; 
and let it be this first day, the Lord's Day, full 
of golden memories and eloquent associations. 
Let it be kept as a perpetual privilege, an 
inalienable rights not with profane and noisy 
mirth, but with the sacred stillness of a joy 
and peace which the world cannot give nor 
take away. If there is given to us, by usage, 
by inheritance, by any sanction, such a day as 
this, we cannot afford to surrender it, we can- 
not afford to be remiss in our observance of it, 
or careless in our appreciation of its worth. 



258 The Sabbath Question. 

I have scarcely left myself a moment's space 
in which to speak of the relation of the civil 
law to the observance of the Lord's Day. But 
there is the less need for me to dwell upon this 
point, because the text itself, as I have now 
unfolded it, seems to indicate the true nature 
of that relation. If it be true that this observ- 
ance is a matter for the individual conscience, 
then what the law has to do is to protect the 
rights of the individual conscience. It is bound 
to do no more than this, but it is bound to do 
this. If any man or any community is fully 
persuaded of the duty or the privilege of sane* 
tifying any day to religious uses, they are to be 
protected in the performance of their duty and 
in the exercise of their privilege ; their worship 
is to be defended from noise and disturbance ; 
their rest is to be secured from the demands of 
business, so far as may be possible without in- 
fringement of the rights of others. Moreover, 
the State has an undoubted right, which, indeed, 
it continually exercises, to ordain by law certain 
days for the refreshment and recreation of its 
citizens, — on sanitary considerations, or for 
historical considerations, or for the sake of any 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 259 

wise expediency ; and to require that on such 
days business of certain sorts shall be sus- 
pended ; to close the governmental offices ; to 
provide that contracts made on such days are 
not binding ; to make of it what we call a legal 
holiday. It may do this every week, and in 
effect it does it when it sanctions the observ- 
ance of the Lord's Day ; and every government 
which is fully persuaded of the need of such a 
rest-day or holiday is even bound to ordain it. 
Only I would have you remember that govern- 
ment cannot make a day holy, that force can- 
not make a day holy. Acts of legislatures and 
of common councils may keep a day silent, may 
make it quiet ; but they cannot keep it holy : 
and perhaps they will discover that they can 
keep it quiet only for a little while. Holiness 
is a thing of liberty, not a thing of force. If 
the observance of the Lord's Day is to be a 
holy observance, it must be a free observance. 
If men come to take Jesus "by force, to make 
him a king,'* he will withdraw himself alone. 
The service which is acceptable in his sight 
must be a reasonable service, a willing service. 
And, as I have said already, the glory of this 



260 The Sabbath Question, 

Christian festival above the Jewish festival is, 
notably, its freedom. 

Now I have finished this discussion, and I 
desire only to recapitulate the argument with 
all possible conciseness. 

i. First I tried to show, in the light of that 
venerable story in Genesis, interpreted by the 
commentary in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
what the Sabbath is ; affirming, that, in the 
highest and truest usage of the word, it is not a 
day of hours and minutes, but an eternal state, 
spiritual, heavenly ; that it is the rest of God, 
and the rest which remaineth for the people of 
God. 

We discovered also that there is a Sabbath 
work which God is doing, — the work of mak- 
ing holy the creation which he made good ; and 
that, according as the people of God enter upon 
their rest (or Sabbatism), they also employ it in 
the same holy activity, in being good and doing 
good. 

And we discovered also, that, though the real 
Sabbath is eternal in the heavens, there may 
be Sabbaths in some lower sense, — Sabbaths 
of days, Sabbaths made for man, shadows and 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 261 

types of the eternal rest in God for which man 
was made : and that, notably, there have been 
two such Sabbaths ; the weekly Jewish Sabbath 
on the seventh day, and the weekly Christian 
Sabbath on the first day. 

2. Then, secondly, we discussed the origin 
and history of the Jewish Sabbath, and inquired 
the meaning of it. We found that it was insti- 
tuted in the wilderness as a monumental day* 
pointing forever backward to the slavery in 
Egypt and to the exodus from Egypt, — points 
ing forever forward, also, with " illusive " proph- 
ecy, to liberty and rest, ---at first to Joshua and 
Canaan, then to David and the earthly king^ 
dom, and then to the Son of David and the 
kingdom of heaven, 

3. Then, thirdly, we discussed the Use and 
indicated the abuse of the Jewish Sabbath : we 
found that it was meant to be a privilege, but 
was perverted to be an irksome bondage ; that 
the Lord Jesus (as a Jew "made under the 
law ") was the true exemplar of the right use of 
the institution, employing it lovingly, gratefully, 
gladly, as an ordinance " made for man ; " and 
that the Pharisees in their disputes with Jesus 



262 The Sabbath Question. 

represented the abuse of the day, making it 
irksome and burdensome upon men, as if men 
were "made for" it. 

4. Passing, then, to the Christian festival of 
the Lord's Day, I showed how it came to be 
observed, and, from the earliest ages of the 
Christian church, has always been observed, as 
a day of sacred privilege ; I reminded you of 
the august significance of this first day of the 
Week, ■— significance at once historic and pro- 
phetic ; and I insisted, that not by the force of 
the Jewish commandment, but by the sanction 
of most venerable usage, by the dictate of 
manifest expediency, and so by the operation 
of the Christian law of love, it is to us a weekly 
Sabbath, to be welcomed and dearly cherished 
as an earnest of the real and perfect Sabbath. 

5. Continuing the argument, I also pointed 
out the greater glory of the Christian Sabbath 
in comparison with the Jewish, as consisting, 
notably, in these three points : (1) that it is a 
free day, not resting upon commandments writ- 
ten and graven in stones, but on the voluntary 
and reasonable service of loving hearts ; (2) that 
it is fast coming to be a universal day, and not 



Right Observance of the Lord's Day. 263 

a day for one nation ; and (3) that it is a more 
spiritual day, pointing, not through cloudy 
types and shadows, but directly, up to the spir- 
itual and eternal rest, and to the risen Christ 
who gives it. 

6. And now I have indicated what seems to 
me the proper method of observing this Lord's 
Day; warning against bondage on the one 
hand, and against license on the other. 

So we cease the discussion where we began 
it, with the thought, the hope, the expectation, 
of the rest into which God is entered, and 
which remaineth for his people ; and with the 
solemn undertone of blended encouragement 
and warning, which has sounded all the while, 
■ — Take heed, "a promise being left of entering 
into rest," that none of us "seem to come 
short of it." 



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